I’m hacked off.
I’m hacked off because we (the special needs parents), have to fight for everything.
We have to fight for more disabled parking spaces.
We have to fight to get our children the right support at school.
For the right diagnosis.
For a diagnosis.
For equipment.
For acknowledgment that we even need equipment.
For suitable changing facilities when we are out and about.
Which is surely just a basic human right, no?!?
We are fighting supermarkets to provide special needs seats in their trolleys so we can do something as simple as buy our groceries without the need for a babysitter!
Why do they want to make it hard for us to give them our hard earned cash when the cost of providing such seating is minimal to them in the big scheme of things?
And, from a public relations point of view, is going to gain them huge gold stars as well as more customers?
We have to fight for housing.
For adaptions.
For understanding.
For support.
We have to bloody well fight for everything!
Does the world not think we have fought enough?
Having a child with any additional needs is hard. It’s really hard.
Many of us have endured hideously difficult introductions to the world of parenting and have been fighting since the day our little beauties arrived on this earth.
How is it fair that that fight just seems to continue.
That unless we are very lucky, it will continue forever.
That we are unlikely to see a world that changes that dramatically in our lifetimes.
Yet it makes us tough. And it makes us focused.
And it makes us want to fight more… and so I am fighting for all of us.
I am going to make a difference, even if it’s a small one. I will challenge my local supermarkets.
Local businesses and anyone who will listen, to make a change.
I will challenge them to understand that there are thousands of families who contribute an incredible amount of money to society, who simply cannot access every day life properly.
And I will challenge them to do something about it.
If just one of you who reads this decides to challenge just one business, organisation or person who is making your life more difficult – whatever it may be – from lack of changing facilities to abuse of disabled parking facilities – then we will slowly start to build a world that our children can enjoy growing up in.
I hate being so negative all the time.
And I beat myself up for it as we should always try to see the positives in our situations right?
But some days, it feels like the world is against us.
Now please help me down from here.
I need to go to bed. X