Mention that you are a stay-at-home mother from Stoke-on-Trent and nobody will imagine anything good about you.

But add the information that you have a disabled child and you will be assumed into heaven, or at least promoted from ill-educated fecklessness to martyrdom – a state of shabby grace.

It might sound like an improvement, but the upgrade from stupid to sacrificing isn’t one I care for when both are equally inaccurate and damning.

I once had someone manage to incorporate both assumptions into one, single, condemnatory sentence: ‘Are you really so bovine that you can’t see how s*** your life is?’ (I should point out that this person wasn’t a complete stranger).

I gave them that stare – you know, the one Paddington Bear only wishes he could do.

Nothing I have done for any of my children, disabled or non-disabled, has been a sacrifice.

If anything had felt like a sacrifice, then I would have known I was making the wrong choice. Because that is all I have done: make a choice.

Admittedly the choice was initially presented to me by circumstance.

I had intended to return to work full-time when my maternity leave ended because … well, to be honest, just because that’s what everybody else does.

I knew that at first I’d be working for nothing, my wages would just cover the cost of childcare.

Although it seemed silly, and rather sad, for me to go to work to earn the money to pay someone else to do a job I desperately wanted to do myself, I never questioned it.

Returning to work after having a baby is what is expected of a woman these days.

Then, one day, a few weeks after my maternity leave started, I got a phone call saying that my employer had sold the business. I was effectively redundant.

I’d had several miscarriages before my longed-for baby arrived.

My husband suggested that it might be good for both myself and our son if I were to take a year out before looking for work, and just concentrate on being a mum: if we tightened our belts we could manage on his wage.

Later we decided that it would make sense to have our second child while I was still at home.

I did make a tentative foray back into the world of work when the children started school, but my eldest, who had been such a contented child until he went to pre-school, had real trouble settling into classroom life.

There were plenty ready to make assumptions then, too: to point the finger at me, for not sending him to nursery when he was a baby.

But I knew that there was something more fundamental at the root of it; after all, my daughter did not have the same problems.

At seven he was diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder.

I know there are many mothers out there in just this position who do work, but for us it just didn’t add up.

There were times when he just could not cope in school, or when school could not cope with him, and I would get a phone call asking me to pick him up even before the lunchtime bell had rung.

Not best practice, granted, strictly not even legal if I had objected, but School and I both agreed that during these times he needed to be in a predictable, low-stimulus environment where he felt safe, with a person who understood him and his difficulties very well, and was supportive of his needs.

In short he needed to be at home, with me.

I could see him through a meltdown, or help him to calm himself better than anyone, and if he had to be off for a couple of days I’d make sure we used the time constructively.

Even when he managed a full day at school, by the end of it he’d have steam coming out of his ears from the effort of holding himself together all day.

The last thing he needed was to have to then go to a childminder or after-school club, and cope with other children in an environment less orderly than a classroom.

Help for autistic children who do not also have learning difficulties was not then, and still is not, readily accessible.

I was the best resource available (and the cheapest): and the only one that all parties would trust implicitly.

We might have been slightly better off financially if I had gone back to work, but in no other way would our family well-being have benefitted.

I know what you’re assuming – something along the lines of: ‘Oh, that’s all very well if you’re a nice middle-class mummy whose husband has a well-paid job.’ But that isn’t how it was with us.

Our one income was relatively modest, and still is. But we didn’t have to make sacrifices, we just had to make choices about what was most important to us as a family.

I don’t think there can be many families in the land who don’t have to prioritise how they spend their money; we just had to be a little more rigorous than most.

We never had to do without the essentials; if we’d ever faced a choice between paying the mortgage and paying the gas bill, it would have been time to rethink our arrangements. But it never came to that.

In fact, in the end we realised that we weren’t substantially worse off than most of our two-income neighbours – possibly because we weren’t paying out a big chunk on childcare, or after-school clubs and holiday play-schemes.

And we only had to run one car. I don’t need a work wardrobe either.

We also never had to juggle whose turn it was to take leave if one of the children was ill, or who would take which week in the school holidays to try to reduce costs a bit.

We got to spend a lot of time with each other, and with the children. Freddie coming along when he did was a surprise for a whole host of reasons.

Because he has Down’s Syndrome we were inundated in his early years with appointments for various check-ups and therapies on a weekly basis.

I’ve never had a problem fitting these in around my work schedule, though (because I don’t have one), nor the hassle of trying to find affordable, inclusive childcare that is both willing and able to meet his additional needs.

So please do not assume that because I have chosen to be a stay-at-home mum that my life has been sacrificed, that it is less than.

A child’s first school is its mother’s lap, and you would not assume that a Nursery Nurse or Early Years Practitioner was bored with her job, or stupid, or that she had wasted her life.

was Nursery Nurse to my own children, I did everything with them that any decent childcare provider would do, and in the process I had the inestimable privilege of witnessing, and being heavily involved in, every moment in the development of these fascinating little beings.

I realise that the choices I have made are not possible for every family. Many mums have to return to work out of cold, hard, financial necessity.

Others are engaged in professions that require them to undertake Continuous Professional Development in order to keep practising in their chosen field.

For them, being a stay-at-home mum is not an option. But for us, my choice to stay at home has been our saving grace.

Although we have less disposable income than other families, we also have less stress, and more time.

This alone may well have saved us from imploding under pressure.

As far as I am concerned my family are my life; therefore, nothing I do to preserve the wellbeing of the family is a sacrifice.

How I laughed. I probably laughed a little too loud and a little too long.

You see, one of the things that ‘Special Needs’ parents (for want of a better phrase) grieve over, in addition to the ‘loss’ of the child they were expecting to have, is the ‘loss’ of the normal, perhaps idyllic even, family life that they were expecting to have.

Even in those days, before Freddie was born with his (apparently) family-destroying diagnosis of Down’s Syndrome, that (apparently) promised lay waste to any hopes of normality that we could ever harbour (heads up, folks – it doesn’t), we weren’t quite a ‘normal’ family anyway.

From the outside we must have looked like a regular, Ladybird book, Topsy and Tim, ideal family (only without the robotic, slightly glazed-over, patience of the mother. I’m waiting for the series where she finally flips her lid and starts setting fire to things).

A mum and a dad, only ever married to each other; two children, a boy and a girl; a three-bed semi with a family saloon on the drive; we even had a cat just like Postman Pat’s Jess.

I’m sure when we first moved in we must have looked to the neighbours like any other, ‘ordinary’, young couple.

They did not see the mother of one of us, who came to help us move in, become extremely agitated when I placed tins of cat food on the ‘wrong’ shelf in my cupboard.

If they had they would not have been alone in not understanding what the problem was. I didn’t either. Not then.

They also wouldn’t have been aware that sometimes, on lovely sunny days, my husband could not comfortably go out into the back garden, because he could hear the infinitesimally faint beeping of their car immobilisers, parked in the street out front, and the noise, inaudible to me, was almost unbearable to him.

After we acquired children, I, Mummy, stayed at home while Daddy went out to work. I didn’t wear a frilly apron, but I did bake things.

Anybody peeking in through the kitchen window might have concluded from the fruit bowl that our favourite was lemon sponge, or that I enjoyed a refined cup of lemon tea in the afternoons.

They would never have guessed that the reason there were so many lemons in the fruit bowl was because some members of my family like to peel and eat them like oranges.

That caused a few ‘issues’ at the school whose fresh-fruit-only snack policy couldn’t encompass the idea that a child who chose to eat lemons and redcurrants could find his senses so offended by more socially acceptable fruits like bananas and apples that he would vomit if he ate any of them.

It also didn’t encompass the fact that it took so much energy just for him to process the information he received during the first hour or so of the day, never mind to keep functioning in a ‘normal’ way like his peers, that by morning break he’s be shaking with hunger, despite having had a good breakfast, and a bit of fruit just wasn’t going to replenish him. He needed carbs.

It didn’t have to be a sugary snack, if they’d just let me provide him with unsweetened Scottish oatcakes he would’ve been fine with that.

But no, it had to be fruit; they couldn’t change the rules just for us, even though everyone at the school was very well aware that we were not ‘normal’.

No one at my daughter’s school was aware of this, though, as we had sent her to a different one, so that she would have a chance to be judged on her own merits, to be treated as a typical kid from a typical family, instead of being automatically tarred with an unfair brush.

This seemed important when she started school. But then an accidental breach of confidentiality during a meeting at my son’s school allowed another mother to become party to my son’s diagnosis, because her son had the same.

This lead to me being invited to a Parent Partnership coffee morning, where I discovered that there were actually a few of us, apparently, “chocolate-box”, families, that didn’t quite fall onto the ‘normal’ spectrum.

One or two were faces that I knew, but I’d had no idea they were facing similar challenges to us.

Then the husband of one of the Alpha Mummies, a woman who treated me with a particularly nauseating blend of pity and disdain, developed a case of blabbermouth, and let slip a few secrets during some locker-room banter that my husband overheard, and, uncharacteristically, shared with me (he couldn’t stick her attitude, either).

Neither of us ever breathed a word to anyone else, but we basked in the secret satisfaction of knowing that, in any person, and any aspect of life, the veneer of perceived ‘normality’ may only be skin-deep.

By the time Freddie came along I was quite at peace with the idea that family was ‘different’, an adjustment perhaps made easier by the fact that neither my husband, nor myself, come from the perfect Mum + Dad + 2.4 kids model of nuclear perfection.

In my husband’s family there were three kids and one adult, and not another living soul anywhere nearby who was related to them.

The only adult worked two jobs to make ends meet, so often the younger children were looked after by the eldest.

In my family, however, there was just one child, but three adults, because my Gran lived with us.

A childless aunt and uncle lived across the road, and I spent a lot of time in their house, and sometimes went away with them for the weekend.

Even with all this handy, free childcare, sometimes my mother would be so overcome by frustration that she’d try to ignite the doormat, or something.

I’d never heard the word ‘divorce’ until 1977 when my parents parted. Now divorce and ‘blended families’ are common.

Eventually my Gran developed dementia and was cared for by my mother.

In the adjoining house there lived a lady even older than my Gran; but in her case she was the carer: for her adult daughter who had schizophrenia.

In the house on the other side lived a man, with two women and several children whose relationship to him we could never discern. They had an extravagant collection of cats.

Prior to that the house had been occupied by a middle-aged couple, who kept two dogs and a goat (bear in mind this was a town house in the middle of the city).

The more I think about it, the more I realise how few of the families around me have conformed to what my daughter’s little classmate, and many other people, would consider ‘normal’.

All around us are (and always have been) families of widely differing shape and circumstance.

There are grandparents who have taken over the care of their grandchildren. There are children who take care of their parents.

There are families with no children, and there are people who are separated from their blood relatives by some unbridgeable gulf, who make family from the friends they have around them.

I don’t think it is only ‘Special Needs’ families (that phrase again) who grieve over the failure to achieve this iconic state.

However, as for me, I refuse to believe I have been robbed of, “normal”, family life, because we are just fine.

It was a sort of watchers guide to keep you entertained on car journeys or on days out. I remember I had one about wildlife i.e birds, squirrels and so on, and I also had a vehicles one.

Recently this popped into my head when I was thinking about cerebral palsy.

I feel like with each piece of equipment issued, or new specialist referral you receive or each service you are referred for – you unlock a new level, you earn a new badge, you can tick off another photo on your watchers guide.

Things you eventually tick off – having a physio, having an OT, acquiring a standing frame… acquiring a second or third standing frame, getting a wheelchair referral, collecting your first wheelchair, a feeding tube change, an upgrade from NG to G, trying and failing at a PEG-J, booking a holiday in an adapted caravan, visiting a city hospital, visiting a city hospital that isn’t your nearest one, your first trip in an ambulance, your second, third, fourth.

You get my point.

Our most recent badge was a big one – the wheelchair access vehicle. A year ago if you used the acronym “WAV” at me I would have no idea what you were talking about.

Now I am in the world of slidey doors, ramp access, winches, hooks, and – actual air con!

Never in my life did I expect to own (well kind of own) a new car. Nor did I really want one either to be honest.

I want to get from A to B with minimal hassle and for us that has meant needing something big and with wheelchair access.

I always said I would never drive a big car too.. it is amazing what you will do when it means making life easier for yourself and your child. Now a big car? No big deal.

(Unless I have to parallel park. Please don’t ask me to do that, with or without parking sensors!)

The whole process seemed a bit staggering at first – who do we apply to, can we afford the deposit? Do we qualify for a grant? Do we need a winch? Will we have space for her bags?

Can I even drive a big car? Will people leave space for the ramp? And many other perplexing questions.

The volume of paperwork involved in filling out the mobility component of the DLA (or PIP – what do I even call it now?!), the choosing a car, the choosing a company (we went with access alternatives and got a “nearly new” as the deposit is way cheaper and we were too lazy to apply for the grant), and then the long wait!

Prior to getting our new van (he is called Huey) I was driving a ford focus.

Days out were an arduous affair – taking apart and re-assembling Amy’s incredibly large and heavy wheelchair and eventually ending up in a situation whereby no passengers would fit in the car and so on.

It is still difficult with a WAV – the wheelchair itself has 5 clips, and then the car has 4 straps attached to each corner of the wheelchair base and in addition to this a big seat belt as well as remembering to put the brakes on the wheelchair.

All very safe and secure, and you’ll feel so proud that first time you realise you’ve done it without too much thought!

Personally I feel quite strongly that the moment your child is a wheelchair user and no longer in a pram – THAT is when you should have a wheelchair van.

There is a HUGE difference between loading a pram into a car than a wheelchair – something that we all learn the hard way.

Wheelchairs do actually amaze me, these hefty pieces of wonderfully crafted bio mechanical engineering, perfectly contoured and adapted to your child’s specific postural needs.

They are one of the shiniest badges you and your child have earned and will enable you (hopefully!) to access the world with relative ease.

For me the need for a wheelchair is synonymous with the need for appropriate transport, something I will one day take up with someone, somewhere… maybe an MP? Who knows.

No one should have to struggle the way we did for so long before Huey entered our lives.

If you haven’t applied yet for your mobility car – I recommend you speak with other parents who have done this already. Attend any exhibitions you can where you can test the cars with your child.

I also recommend you contact anyone on your care team for help with the paperwork if you are struggling.

Take all of the help you can get, soak in as much information as you can, and most importantly – enjoy seeing your child’s happy face in their chair when you glance in the rear view mirror – for me that has been the unexpected thing that I loved most about getting this car.

I wish you all the best on yours and your child’s quest to earn more badges…

May you all wear them with pride as you reflect on the incredible journey you have embarked upon.

My 8 year old daughter has autism. She attends, and is doing very well at, mainstream school.

April 2nd is autism awareness day around the world and the start of autism awareness month.

My daughter’s school are not doing anything to mark this at all.

There will be no autism awareness assembly.

There will be no dress down day for an autism charity.

There will be no information given to the children at all about it at any time that month.

Most parents of autistic children would be bitterly disappointed.

It seems like a missed opportunity as more and more children with autism attend mainstream schools in line with current policies of inclusion.

What people often forget though is that inclusion does not just mean more autistic children attending mainstream it also means more children will a huge mix of abilities and cultures attending mainstream.

Inclusion means everyone is welcomed and treated equally. It means classes have an eclectic mix of children of varying backgrounds, abilities and cultures in order to enhance the learning of everyone.

In practice my daughter has four children in her own class who do not have English as a first language.

She has children with learning disabilities, gifted children, children from all over the world and some with various medical conditions.

It is a rich learning environment where all are nurtured and all educated to the best of their ability.

My daughter is no more special than any other child in that class just because she has autism.

In fact the children in her class do not even know she has autism because there is no need for it to be known.

Exactly the same with the children who have asthma or the child who has ADHD.

Difference is totally normal and not something that is singled out for attention.

That is how it should be.

I want her to be celebrated and honoured for who she is NOT in spite of or because she has autism.

How would we feel if a child in her class was singled out because they have a different skin colour and it was mentioned their achievement was extra special because of their skin colour?

Or when a child did well at spelling the school singled them out as being ‘extra special’ because they come from a single parent family?

If this was done we would cringe. We would feel uncomfortable and even upset.

I feel a little bit like that about autism awareness month in relation to my daughter.

I am not ashamed she has autism just like I am not ashamed of her strawberry blond hair or her sparkling blue eyes.

I am not against anyone knowing she has autism either. I openly blog about it and talk about it.

BUT if her school were to mark autism awareness month in a big way and single her out she would feel uncomfortable and so would I.

Everyone is different. Everyone is beautiful. My daughter is wonderful because of who she is not because she has autism.

Autism does not define her.

Please understand I am all for autism awareness. I have made autism awareness videos, written poetry, done media interviews and I blog weekly about autism.

The world needs to know more about autism to be more tolerant and understanding.

But singling a child or children out in a mainstream school during autism awareness month is not always the best way to do this in my opinion.

I am delighted her mainstream school are not marking awareness month and I support them totally as a parent of two autistic children.