My son is the happiest little boy I have known. My parents have always said that I was the happiest out of all my siblings despite obviously very hot and painful joints from right when I was, well my sons age.
As it stands at the moment, I open a teddy bear book and he giggles at the grinning bear, he giggles at the word banana he roars with laughter at tickles.He adores learning, he loves his French picture dictionary and knows some French words and English words for a few foods. He isn't walking and that is not due to two parents unable to make him do standing activities,no he is not ill, no he feels why keep a dog and bark, literally, why walk to something when if he points to something my assistant dog or a parent will get it and of course the doggy getting something is another excuse to chuckle! There is not one activity we do with him that bores him, he loves looking at and trying every thing.
This is not an opportunity to boast, I am explaining who my son is because I would be devastated if he lost this personality because someone's child was bullying him at school, if he lost his quick thinking because he was feeling so down.
This is every nice parents fear for their nice child. Lovely parents seek to find their child three nice peoples schools well before school entry time to try and avoid proximity with ferrel kids however nowadays there are no great catchment areas, we all think there are, so,show deluded by the sixties generation that is our parents that good catchment still exists, but does that really make any difference to the child's perception of school, heck Bob Diamond is a scallywag and ex CEO for Barclays bank,I have no doubt he lived in a great catchment area! It is in my opinion that money does not always equal moralistic, compassionate and considerate adults or their offspring. I don't know Bob Diamonds children, I am sure they are all pleasant but money does not equate to good ethics or kind children.
There is not a parent in this land which will not share the common ground of concern about bullying in schools both at primary and secondary school level and now even via social networking. However am I right to have perhaps more concern than my well counterparts about my son being bullied because of me?
I hear my sister in my ear going "ahh don't worry Caro, children don't see disability as adults do" yeah I am not convinced that nasty children will still not use my difference to be very unkind to Christopher. I have no idea what strategies to adopt at this stage, I know I am thinking way too early about this and one such strategy will be to ensure he goes to a play school, again a nice play school, with nice children in it hopefully who will get used to seeing me, my assistant dog and him at play school. These same children will hopefully get the same school allocated and Christopher will already have an army of little children ready to stand up for him with the odd stray child at his school feels like picking on him.
So I have been on Mumsnet today to see if other parents with disabilities have been in this situation or how they intend to deal with it or have dealt with it, hopefully I can add to this blog later thanks to their thoughts.
Finally, here is a classic example of bullying nowadays, brace yourselves new mummies! My sister, a doctor with her doctor boyfriend, lives in a nice catchment area for a nice primary school, you would think all children would be nice there, WRONG! On Thursday, my eight year old nephew was being picked on for being a "virgin" by older boys at his junior school!! WHAT THE F$#K !?! Heck there isn't much they can pick on my nephew about,he is brilliant at sport, popular, very attractive, big blue eyes, blonde hair and tall, I guess when the chips are down what is there to be unkind about, heck why not bully a little boy about not having sex! As disabled parents, we chose to have our lovely children and they will no doubt go on to make fantastic adults but we chose to bring them into the world and it seems to me we should pre plan for bullying because they are perhaps left more exposed to unkindness at school than children with well parents.
