tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19135888292284192042024-03-16T01:09:21.658+00:00Grace Under PressureSophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.comBlogger99125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-90038044578192749682016-01-25T07:02:00.000+00:002016-04-14T06:44:33.086+01:00You've got to do it, to be it, to see it<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I keep thinking about the day I learned of
Grace’s diagnosis.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I’m not really sure how I have time to do
this, given the blur of busyness in which I currently exist. But amid the noise
and movement and ideas and emails and meetings and phone calls and the thump
thump of feet running and heart beating – there will suddenly be a moment of
mental stillness and I’ll be back in that other room, on the phone, hearing the
doctor’s words.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">It’s odd that I managed until now to
compartmentalise this moment. Frankly, it’s amazing that I could ever put it
away. Because when it comes back to me as it has been doing, it is still – years
on – powerful. I see it and feel it and am undone by it all over again. I am again
the woman on the tube blinking away sudden tears while everyone pretends not to
notice. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">It’s just like the old days.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Only it’s not. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The reason I am remembering is a positive
one. It is because of where I am now and where I am now is a moment that is on the
edge of being extraordinary.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Finding out that my daughter had autism was
not the end of the world. It was not a great tragedy. Finding out that no-one
really understood what that meant, or understood how she felt, or appreciated
or welcomed her as a person who lived differently – that, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> was the thing that broke my heart. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Grace put my heart back together for me, of
course. She just kept going and so, so did I, because she showed me how.
Together we’ve created a space for her that allows her to be herself and to
enjoy being herself. It’s a space we have continually to fight for, a space we
have to keep pressing open when it threatens to squeeze shut. Some days we feel
like Princess Leia and Han Solo in the rubbish compactor. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But other days I watch her and she looks
like wonderful Rey, forging ahead bravely to her own destiny.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Learning how to see and understand my
daughter has been the most important lesson of my life. It has taught me about
diversity, and also how little I still understand about diversity. It has
taught me to ask uncomfortable questions. It has taught me that making other
people feel uncomfortable will frequently prompt reactions that in turn make me
ill at ease.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">But it has also taught me that if you want
to see diversity, you have to get out there and be it. If you want a system
that appreciates and embraces diversity, you have to get out there and build
it. If you don’t make the changes you want to see, you can’t expect things to
change. But – and oh, this is a wonderful ‘but’ - if you do make those changes,
then wonderful things can happen.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">After Grace’s diagnosis I campaigned to
change attitudes with a quiet understanding that at most I was only likely to
achieve small changes, mostly in the immediate space around me. For a while
that was ok. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">But now I want to make bigger changes. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The last few months of leading the Women’s
Equality Party has shown me that bigger changes are possible, if you’re brave
enough to reach for them. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I was one of the first founding members of
the Women’s Equality Party because I feel passionately that diversity must be
at the very core of everything we do and I want to create a space – and a
movement – for everyone who feels the same way.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Now I want to change more than the most
immediate space around me. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I want to change London. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">And I want to do it by standing for Mayor
of London, as the Women’s Equality Party’s nominated candidate. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Diversity is the motor that makes any city
flourish. Let’s make London a city where people like Grace, and millions of
others who are totally unlike her and unlike each other, can come together and
walk side by side in common understanding and endeavour.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Let’s be the change we want to see. Come
with me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Because equality is better for everyone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlVNjpAcrl3Y4kXarsXX80Hwi0KqS7M3vrr8h8eAlbbDHfz6BMQD725HA-zkmTuaCU1-0itsy9eoWv7_WBSfNXM-aKAbCzyuJJrdKnh_dtQOy7BGxus3RYOUX-mVpg6BQlnu8pR_4jSsB6/s1600/star-wars-force-awakens-rey.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlVNjpAcrl3Y4kXarsXX80Hwi0KqS7M3vrr8h8eAlbbDHfz6BMQD725HA-zkmTuaCU1-0itsy9eoWv7_WBSfNXM-aKAbCzyuJJrdKnh_dtQOy7BGxus3RYOUX-mVpg6BQlnu8pR_4jSsB6/s400/star-wars-force-awakens-rey.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></i></div>
Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-68051633750125948782015-07-22T00:29:00.003+01:002015-07-23T11:52:39.817+01:00On asking 'Why?' - and making room for new voices<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">One of my first jobs was as a financial journalist. I wrote about the stock
market and why the shares listed on it rose and fell. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Every morning I called traders and analysts, asking them what might
impact trading that day. I wrote down their answers, constructed a story, and
filed it – usually the first of several daily reports.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I spent the first six weeks with no idea what I was writing about. It
wasn’t just that I didn’t really understand this world, but that every question
I asked seemed to bring an answer I understood even less. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I became very good at writing in code. There’s a certain vocabulary
that goes with financial journalism, and I learned it fast. So some of it was a
little … opaque. But that was fine. Nobody guessed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But I was embarrassed. And I hated feeling that there was a lot more
going on than I knew. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So eventually, after one of my sources had given me a particularly mysterious
answer, I asked: “Why?” There was a long pause on the line while he thought.
And then he laughed, and said: “I don’t know. Because that’s the way it is.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So I asked “why?” again. And we started to really talk. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">My reports got a lot more interesting. I discovered more news, made
more contacts. I kept asking why, and before long it became a habit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">‘Why’ is never an entirely easy question to ask. It can irritate
people. It can put people on the spot. It can draw hostile responses from folk,
who prefer to paint the questioner as a fool.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As a journalist, I got used to that. Irritating people is an
occupational hazard when your work involves asking ‘why’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As a voter, however, I am fed up with it. As a voter, it seems to me
that I have every right to ask ‘why’ and expect a non-irritated answer. But
every time I ask ‘why’ I feel as though I am interrupting a conversation the
outcome of which has long been decided without me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Here are some of the ‘why’s I haven’t had answers to:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Why have the issues that matter to me mostly been relegated to a couple
of pages at the back of each party’s manifesto?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Why do the main political parties treat me as though I am a member of a
special interest group instead of someone who represents half the population?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Why, throughout March, April and May this year did the harassed
canvassers that came regularly to my door seem uninterested in asking me any
questions, let alone answering mine, and more concerned about ticking boxes on
their clipboards? (Actually, there was one question they asked. It was “Is your
husband in?”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I came to the conclusion, in my twenties, that the financial system was
just a machine and that however people wrung their hands and bemoaned its
impersonality it would just keep crunching away, producing and digesting debt,
shares and currencies like so many strings of meaningless numbers, unfazed by
any human intervention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Now I think that’s actually a better description of the current
political system. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to just be
something that gets digested every four or five years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So I’ve decided to change the political system.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I know! Isn’t it great?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s not just me, of course. There are a whole lot of us. We are a
grassroots movement, in fact, in towns and cities around Scotland, England and
Wales.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">We’re called the Women’s Equality Party, and we’re on a fantastic
political adventure with a serious goal: We’re going to put equality for
everyone back on the agenda and shine a spotlight on what needs to be fixed -
fast. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">We’re working with everyone in our branches to write practical policies
for real change. We will unveil those policies in the autumn and then campaign
hard to bring them about. Come spring we will field candidates against the
other political parties and show that we are a real electoral force to be reckoned
with.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">You don’t have to give up your current political allegiances to join
us. You just have to believe that equality is better for everyone. We welcome
people from right across the political spectrum who want to work with us to achieve
the following goals:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Equal representation in politics, business, industry
and right across working life so that women’s voices are heard at the same
volume as men’s<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Equal pay and an equal opportunity to thrive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">An end to violence against women<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Equal parenting and caregiving and shared
responsibilities at home to give everyone equal opportunities at home and in
the work place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Equal education – a system that creates opportunities
for all children and an understanding of what that matters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Equal representation by and in the media<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">We won’t have policies on other issues. We are going to concentrate,
laser-like, on all of the above in order to make them happen. Our candidates,
who will be required to sign up to those objectives, will not be bound by a
party line on anything else. So in addition to shouting about our objectives
they will be able to give voice to their own opinions on other matters –
bringing a new richness and diversity to politics as more ordinary people make
their voices heard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">This post may look like a very different one to the kind of thing I
generally write. But it’s not. Not really. Because the work I’ve been doing
since my daughter was diagnosed with autism five years ago is what’s brought me
to the place I find myself now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">You don’t have to put up with what’s not working, you see. You don’t
have to subside if you ask why and the response that comes is not satisfactory.
You don’t have to put up with indifference, and a refusal to make room for new
voices.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When change happens, it happens from the outside. So all of you who
feel like you’re on the outside – come with me. It’ll be fun, I promise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #27282a; font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">The Women’s Equality Party is a new non-partisan force in
British politics uniting people of diverse ages, backgrounds, ethnicities,
beliefs and experiences in the shared determination to see women enjoy the same
rights and opportunities as men so that all can flourish. To find out more
about us, click </span></i><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://womensequality.org.uk/about/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">here.</span></i></a></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-60410001986148460692015-05-23T16:44:00.000+01:002015-05-23T17:58:41.456+01:00 That elephant in the room? It has a right to be here too.<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's Saturday morning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Upstairs the teenagers are still in bed. Downstairs, my youngest child - tangle-haired and barefoot - draws at the kitchen table. Outside, the birds are singing and bouncing on the blossom-fat branches of the apple tree. Inside, the rolling burble of the boiling kettle rises.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I spoon coffee from a jar, and close my eyes and breathe. And smile.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The half-term holiday is here. Thank God. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Grace has got through another term. Last week we went to parents' evening. Teacher after teacher smiled to see my beautiful girl - who has grown now to stand shoulder to shoulder with me - and teacher after teacher shook my hand enthusiastically. We went home beaming. Grace's report card had 'excellent' on every line.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She is exhausted. Pale with the strain. She will no doubt sleep until lunchtime if I let her. But she has done it. She has overcome real hurdles. There has been hurt and difficulty, again. Young people are often not kind. Adolescence is not kind. A learning environment tailored to other people's strengths is not kind.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But she has done it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I make breakfast and chat with Betty. When she has finished, and slipped off her chair to go and potter upstairs, I pick up my phone and start to flip through the newspapers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the first articles I read begins: "Keeping children with special educational needs in mainstream schooling can deprive them of expert care - and their classmates of a decent education."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't read it, I think. Don't read it. You don't need to read it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I read it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The article is written anonymously. (Of course it is. These are the rules of social media now. Be daring, be divergent, but above all be undetectable. God forbid you should take responsibility for your own shitstorm.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The unnamed author is a teacher. The teacher writes that our country's insistence on 'inclusion' in schools means that we are turning a blind eye to the elephant in the room, which is (I am summarising) that we're not actually including children with special educational needs because their needs mean that they are not undergoing the same experience as everyone else on the premises.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Furthermore, the 'normal' children on the premises are at best disadvantaged and at worst scarred by having to share their education thus.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I feel like I've been punched in the stomach. But then I get to the comments at the end of the article.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is a lot of praise for it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"How many parents of SEN children are actually deluded or just plain ignorant of the pros and cons of 'inclusion' and insist on a right which may suit their own prejudices rather than the wellbeing of their child?" is one comment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another asks: "Why are we investing in a full time staff member to control the behaviour of a child who is basically uneducatable?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That prompts helpful advice from another quarter: "Being able to remove the troublemakers and have them educated in specialist units better suited to them would make a vast difference."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I can't bear it, and I write an online contribution saying how sad I am to see parents and teachers at loggerheads again instead of supporting each other in a system that puts both sides under intolerable strain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I get an answer back explaining the teachers are fine, it's the parents that are "ignorant, self-entitled and pushy." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I sit back in my chair and exhale, a bit shakily. I wonder what to do. I should walk away. Put down my phone and go and shower and move the day along from this. But walking away isn't an option for Grace. She will attract this crap her whole life. So I can't walk away either.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem is that inclusivity requires three things: money, training and tolerance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Right now the education system is thin on all of those.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I sympathise with teachers who are struggling to teach classes of 30 children or more with limited resources and little appreciation. I sympathise with parents whose children feel uncomfortable around or frustrated by the child in their class who is not like the rest of them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But what, exactly, is it that Grace and I are supposed to do?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Are we supposed to just shuffle off?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do any of these people think we enjoy feeling forced upon the system?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do they think we're just brazening it out for the hell of it? That I greet Grace at the door every night with a high-five and a "you go girl, how many people did you piss off today?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm not ignorant, or self-entitled. (I'll admit to pushy, but needs must.) I had to learn a lot about autism, fast, when Grace was diagnosed. I had to give up all expectations of the life to which I had thought myself entitled, and learn instead to go what I'd been given.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I work hard with my daughter to teach her to cope in a world that frequently overwhelms her. I work hard to help her to control her anxiety, try to make eye contact, think of appropriate conversational responses. I have taught her about considering other people's feelings. She works harder than I do. She tries and tries and tries. The onus seems permanently to be on her to fit in with the rest of the world, while the cruelty and impatience of the other children (and some of the teachers) is accepted as just the way things are.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Talk to most parents of a child with SEN struggling in a mainstream school and they will tell you that too often the teachers are at best overworked and at worst untrained yet convinced they know better, while the parents are not listened to and their child blamed for class distractions and turned upon by their peers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thousands of parents choose to home school rather than go through all that. Others manage to get their child into a specialist unit. But most of us struggle on, because we have to pay the mortgage, so opting out of the world of work is not an option any more than finding a different school when getting a statement of educational needs is like panning for gold and the specialist units are few and full anyway.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People may write that mainstream education is not the best option for my daughter. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But what if it's the only option there is?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If mainstream education, as messy and difficult as it is, really is the only option for most of us, then perhaps we need to consider it differently, while we campaign for more money and more training? (We shouldn't need to campaign for tolerance. But many of us do.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inclusivity isn't easy. We all talk about it as though it is, but sometimes it really isn't. It can be hard to welcome all, and embrace difference. That's ok. We just have to keep doing it until it doesn't feel uncomfortable. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because teaching children to pass exams is not the only reason for them to go to school.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Children also go to school to learn about the world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the world is diverse.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Society flourishes when it embraces the diverse. Society is fairer when it listens to the people within it who think differently.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So let's think differently, and flourish. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Together.</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My book Grace Under Pressure: Going the Distance as an Asperger's Mum, is published by Piatkus and available <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grace-Under-Pressure-distance-Aspergers/dp/074995826X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top">here</a>.</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In November I will be running the New York Marathon to raise funds for The National Autistic Society, which campaigns for better understanding and support for people with autism and their families. These days there are lots of voices calling for charitable funding, and many people running, cycling and swimming to show their dedication to a cause. Grace and I would be most grateful if you would pick us out among that worthy crowd and show us your support <a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=SophieWalker">here</a>.</span></i><br />
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Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-91031411709789140222015-03-26T12:06:00.000+00:002015-03-26T12:06:10.133+00:00World Autism Awareness Day is coming around again. Why are you still not listening?When I sat down to write this year's blog for World Autism Awareness Day, the first thing I did was read <a href="http://courage-is.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/on-world-autism-awareness-day.html">last year's, </a>which was about asking the teaching community for better understanding and support.<br />
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I could write the same bloody article again today, word for word, so little has changed in the past year.<br />
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I won't do that, because I want people to keep reading this year's post.<br />
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But from now on I'm not going to be diplomatic any more.<br />
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I've spent years trying to understand the point of view of people who refuse to consider mine. I've listened many times to the lecture on how these things take time. And I've discussed at great length and on multiple occasions my own personal responsibilities, and the efforts that my daughter needs to make in order to fit in.<br />
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But really, now, I've had enough.<br />
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I have had ENOUGH.<br />
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Enough of talking to people who aren't listening (even though some of them fake it extremely well.)<br />
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Enough of asking for the same things, over and over again.<br />
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Enough of being told it's my fault, or her fault, or anyone's fault but theirs.<br />
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Talking to these people about Grace and other people with autism, and the support we would really like to have, please, is like speaking into a vacuum and watching my words disappear with a silent 'pop' in an airless, unfriendly atmosphere. It's like yelling for hours into a long dark well without ever hearing the responding echo bounce back to me from the bottom of it.<br />
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It's driving me crazy. I don't want to do it any more.<br />
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So please, you lot, will you just, please LISTEN.<br />
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If I was asking for special consideration I might be able to keep my temper a little better. If I, and all those other parents engaged in these eye-wateringly tedious negotiations, were in fact asking for something to which we knew we had no right, we could maybe just about cope with the daily duel.<br />
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But we're not, you see. Our children have the same right to an education as everyone else's.<br />
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Our children have the right to be included in your lessons and to be supported and taught, just as every other child does. Our children have the right to expect flexibility and kindness and empathy (even while being constantly criticised by rigid, blinkered "professionals" for being incapable of expressing these attributes themselves.)<br />
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Why do our children have this right? Because, um, it's the law.<br />
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But if that's not reason enough for you, try this:<br />
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Our children are ASSETS ( - are you listening yet?) Our society advances when we embrace the non-conformists and the free thinkers and the eccentrics. Our children have a lot to give. They can learn. Help them to find a way to do this that does not insist they first squeeze themselves to fit a template of 'normal' that you've drawn up to your own specifications and which can only result in their failure.<br />
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Stop punishing our children if they become too anxious to cope with your demands. Giving an autistic child detention is not going to magically make them understand how important it is to do what you say. It's only going to make them even more anxious, and likely to get it wrong, again.<br />
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Stop telling us our children are 'a handful' or 'difficult' or 'playing up'.<br />
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Stop telling us we need parenting classes, when you've not had any autism training or failed to understand the training you undertook. (It's not hard to find autism training, by the way. Here's some, right <a href="http://www.autism.org.uk/Our-services/Training-and-consultancy/Ask-autism/Online-modules/Supporting-families.aspx">here</a>, from the <a href="http://www.autism.org.uk/">National Autistic Society</a> which by the way has pages and pages of the stuff.)<br />
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And - especially for the attendance officers this one - stop sending us letters about our children's school attendance. Do you seriously think this is news to us? Don't you think we're killing ourselves every day already to get them there? If you want to know what's going on, talk to your colleagues - yes those ones on the other side of the staff room, say perhaps the SENCo, or the head of year, or the form teacher, or the teaching assistant - before you send us a postal missive demanding that we explain ourselves to you. We've already done that, to every other bloody member of staff.<br />
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I know none of this is terribly polite. I know that I'll get told off for being unhelpful. So fine, tell me off. I'm used to it, and so is my daughter. It makes us feel crappy, but we're used to that too.<br />
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But this time, when you've finished telling us off, try thinking about what we're asking for. And consider this too: wouldn't you rather just be getting on with your job instead of arguing with us? We know you're all overworked and underpaid. We know you don't want to spend all this extra time and effort on paperwork and phone calls and this-that-and-the-other. We know you resent playing social worker when you're actually trained to be a teacher.<br />
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So fine, teach. It's what you're good at, right?<br />
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We'll stick to what we're really, really good at, which is parenting our autistic children.<br />
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Then you can stick to what you're good at, which is teaching ALL of the children in front of you.<br />
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A tip: our job involves tearing up the rule book and adapting our job to best fit the needs of the children we have. It's an approach you might like to consider in yours.<br />
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<i>World Autism Awareness Week starts on Friday, November 27 and runs till Thursday, April 2, which is World Autism Awareness Day, 2015. For more information on ways you can participate, click<a href="http://www.autism.org.uk/Get-involved/Raise-money/World-Autism-Awareness-Week.aspx"> here.</a></i><br />
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<i>I will be running the New York Marathon in November 2015 in support of my daughter and Britain's National Autistic Society, which provides information, support and pioneering services for people with autism, and campaigns for a better world for them. If you would like to cheer me on, please click <a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=SophieWalker">here</a>.</i><br />
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Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-25256560220506933982015-03-16T10:47:00.008+00:002015-03-24T10:57:27.463+00:00Can you swim a marathon?I used to be able to complete a mile in 9 and a bit minutes on a good day.<br />
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For the last year it has taken me about 40 minutes, and 70 lengths of my local swimming pool.<br />
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Most of that time, I've felt as though I was competing in the wrong event. Managing to get along, sure, and even do it quite well a lot of the time. But nonetheless I've always still felt as though I was not really doing the right thing.<br />
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Sometimes I watch my daughter and I wonder if she feels the same way. She's a fabulous teenager these days. While many things are much better than they were when I used to write on here about her primary school years, some other things are not better at all. Grace has some wonderful days but she still has very tough ones, when her experience of the world seems to be light years away from everyone else's, and the gap between her understanding and everyone else's causes her pain.<br />
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On those days I feel that whatever I'm doing for her is not enough. On those days I ask myself how else I can help. It doesn't seem fair that she goes out to a daily challenge and I don't. It doesn't seem fair.<br />
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Lately, I have wondered whether the injury that has been kept me in the pool and away from marathon training and fundraising for so long might need to be tested again.<br />
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As I have ploughed up and down the blue-lined box of the swimming pool, constrained by the bobbing orange ropes and the other swimmers in front of me and behind me, I have chafed more and more at the feeling of being hemmed in and thought back to the glorious ten- and fifteen-milers of last spring before my knee popped and I limped over the London Marathon finish line an hour later than I wanted to, and all the running had to stop for a while.<br />
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When I hug my daughter and kiss her upset away, I sometimes smell the chlorine on myself and it makes me think again: I am not doing enough. I need to get out of the pool and back into the real world of tough training. Grace's days are hard. Mine, though sometimes I find them so, are really not.<br />
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So I've taken the plunge. To get out of the pool, that is.<br />
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In November this year I'm going to take part in the New York Marathon for Britain's National Autistic Society (NAS), to raise awareness of autism and support my daughter and many more thousands of people like her, and, I hope, to attract many generous donations so that the NAS can continue to provide information and support and pioneering services. So that together we can campaign for a better world for people with autism.<br />
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I'm a bit nervous about this, I confess. I don't know if my injury is healed or just keeping quiet until I really test it. But what's the worst that can happen? Living with autism must, I think, feel a bit like trying to swim a marathon. Or maybe cycle a swim-athon. Or run a bike challenge.<br />
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All I have to do is complete 26.1 miles with a slightly busted knee. It's really not much, by comparison.<br />
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<i>If you would like to support Grace and me please click <a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/SophieWalker">here</a>. I'll be posting more regularly on this blog as I get back into training. Thank you for reading, and for helping us both to keep putting one foot in front of the other. </i><br />
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<br />Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-78225599267385991572015-01-25T15:09:00.001+00:002015-03-24T10:58:15.505+00:00One by one (by one, by one)<div>
There's a small woman hopping up and down on my right shoulder. She looks a bit like me, but for some reason she's speaking with a gorblimey accent. She's leaning forward with an agitated air and saying into my ear: "Don't. 'E's not worth it. Walk away!"</div>
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I try to listen to her. I take a deep breath to calm myself. But it doesn't work. So I turn, and stride along the aisle, past eggs and dried fruit, in the direction taken by a young man a couple of moments ago. At the top I look left, only to see him disappear behind swinging doors into a staff-only area. I exhale, and square my shoulders.</div>
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"'E's not worth it!" hisses the mini-me again.</div>
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But I'm walking over to the door, beside which a senior-looking staff member is ticking things off a list. </div>
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"Excuse me?"</div>
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<div>
She looks up. Beside us, an industrial-sized rotisserie splats and fizzes, turning rows of browning chickens.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Yes?"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's been a good weekend, so far. I've seen friends and relaxed and felt enthusiastic about things again. In slightly giddy mood I went to Waitrose and piled my trolley full of rich, tasty food, planning to cook a big meal for my family. I thought: I am nearly well, my loved ones are all well - Grace is calm, happy and productive - January is nearly over. Tick, tick, tick, tick.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Then I turned a corner and two young people, dressed in the supermarket's uniform, came towards me from the opposite direction. The young man - jaunty walk, shoulders back - was just about to arrive at the punchline of a story that was already making his female colleague giggle. As he walked past I caught the end of his comment: ".. like a special needs one, you know? So you have to look after 'em!" His colleague smothered laughter. They walked on.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But I was stuck. A victim of a walk-by shooting in the bakery aisle. I felt like I'd been splattered against the shelves of finest organic flour. Someone was laughing at my daughter again. I felt sick and sweaty. I felt like I was overreacting. I felt like I wanted to run after that young man and shake him til his teeth rattled.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I looked at all the food in my trolley. I didn't want to eat any of it. Up popped the worried little woman on my shoulder - the one who fears being a spoilsport, a humourless, professional complainer. I batted her away. One by one, I thought. I have to keep tackling them one by one, until there are fewer people who think it's ok to make Grace an object of fun.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Thus, when the senior-looking staff member looks up and says "Yes?" - I say: "I've just overheard a member of your staff make a joke about people with special needs that I found offensive. Do you think I could speak to him?"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The woman blanches, and says very quickly that she will go and get the duty manager.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"It's just - " I begin, - "I have a daughter - "</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
She stops me and says: "Me too. I'll be right back."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I wait for five minutes. I still feel sick. Then two young men walk up to me. One is the duty manager, who looks very uncomfortable. One is the young man who spoke. His face is a perfect blank. He looks at me, and fixes a bland smile, and clasps his hands together.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"I would like to apologise for my comments," he tells me. "They were taken out of context."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Wait, what? Out of context?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"That doesn't sound like an apology," I retort. "Whatever is going on in your head you should not be voicing it here. Do you have any idea how upsetting it is to be here and shopping and overhear someone making a joke about that?"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Urgh. I am so very un-eloquent.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
He smiles blandly at me again, and presses his hands closer together. His expression doesn't change.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"I would like to apologise for my comments," he says again.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Go on then, I think.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's a pause.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"I have a daughter with autism," I tell him. "And I'm sure I'm not the only person in your shop right now who is living with someone who has special needs. Do you have any idea what my home life is like?"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Double-urgh. Why one earth did I say that? Why can I not explain such an uncomplicated thought. Use your words, I tell myself, as though I am four.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The duty manager is still silent. The other man smiles blandly at me again.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"I would like to apologise for my comments."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Oh, enough.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Ok then," I say tiredly. "Thank you. Please don't do it again."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I walk away and I don't look back. I think: I don't think I did that very well. I think: That was embarrassing. Then I think of Grace, and I think how glad I was that she wasn't with me, to overhear someone walk past and mock her so blithely.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One by one. It doesn't matter if it doesn't always come out right. It just has to keep being said. Until maybe, at some point, we don't need to say it at all.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Postscript: On Monday Jan. 26 Waitrose contacted me at home after seeing this post, widely circulated on Twitter. A spokeswoman said: "These kind of comments are not expected and not allowed. We will be contacting our learning and development department to comment that this has been happening, so it can be incorporated into future programmes, and a team sent out to reiterate our policies."</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com201tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-91510387891472673012015-01-09T14:19:00.000+00:002015-03-24T10:58:54.623+00:00How Calamity Jane helped me through depression. (Minus sasparilly.)<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">I can’t remember the last time I
wrote about being depressed. But at the moment there’s a lot that I can’t
remember.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">I have spent hours, lately, walking
around my house looking for things I have forgotten or lost. Normally, I don’t
lose things. When I do, it makes me very anxious. It also tends to happen when
I’m not well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">Things that I have lost lately
include keys, books, phones, letters, various items of food. Information I have
forgotten: how to drive to my husband’s office, whether I washed my hair this
morning, what the name of this blog was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">Amid the fog, however, there are a
small number of things I have not forgotten. Among them are all the words to
The Deadwood Stage.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">In the evenings I sit down in front
of the television. My husband builds me huge leaping fires of coal and wood and
I scorch my skin trying to sit close enough to get warm. My youngest daughter turns around and around on my lap like a little dog marking
her bed before settling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">Then the screen lights up, with a blast of golden trumpets and technicolour, and we stop fidgeting.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">Calamity Jane. It’s such a ridiculous film, so silly and out of date that I am smiling by the first minute
and the first line of the first song - which is of course about <a href="http://youtu.be/x_xmujSyxkU">The Deadwood Stage,</a> careering into town in clouds of dust and flapping curtains, and bearing
a bright-faced, curly-haired heroine. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">I love Calamity Jane. I love her for her
name – patron saint of those of us who can’t remember anything and keep banging
their heads and bruising their elbows in the process of looking – but I also love her because she’s only been on screen for three minutes now
and she is literally – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">literally </i>-- slapping
her buckskin-clad thigh while rhyming ‘heading over the hills’ with ‘Injun
arrows thicker than porcupine quills’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">Encircled in my arms, five-year-old
Betty gives a great shout of delight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">For the next hour and a bit we watch
Calamity Jane gallop like mad, shoot anything that moves and sling back "sasparilly". We watch her tell tall stories, make mistakes, fall in love with
the wrong man, and match him up with the wrong woman. We watch her try to
pretty herself up only to fall in a muddy creek and get laughed at. And we
watch her come up smiling – and usually singing -- time after time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">Yes, it’s terribly cheesy. But it’s
also funny, mostly on purpose, and it’s a tonic to see this young woman
clowning and capering and not caring what people think of her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">When the film has finished and the
fire has crumbled to embers and my daughter is asleep in my arms with her cheeks
flushed, I think to myself that I must try to care less and laugh more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">The next morning it’s raining and the
sky is dark and my first thought on waking is
“Oh no” quickly followed by “I can’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">But Betty needs to go to school so I
get up and get her ready and we leave the house. I have managed to find my
keys, which is a good thing, but I am also struggling not to cry, which most
definitely is a problem, particularly as we are still only at the garden gate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">Then I hear something. Beside me, Betty is singing a faint tune. As I make out what it is I start to smile. I look over, and my daughter tilts her head back into the rain to see me from underneath the curve of her bee-embroidered umbrella. She reaches out her
spare hand.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;">“Whip crack-away!” she urges, grinning. "Whip crack-away, Mummy!"</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #b818b8; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-65975405648548716352014-09-16T11:07:00.003+01:002015-03-24T11:00:16.177+00:00From across the divide, a sign of hopeLiving with a person who says 'No' a lot is hard. It's a life of protracted negotiation without resolution, where things stop before they start. It's a life of knowing any tiny step forward is unlikely and would in any case be followed by ten steps back. It's an existence that requires many deep breaths a day.<br />
<br />
It's hard living with a person who greets you in the morning with a No. It's hard living with a person who glares at you when the light is still not fully in the sky and you are still coming around from sleep and figuring out how to feel about the day. It's hard at the other end of the day too when any feelings of satisfaction or lightness about other aspects of your life must be weighed against the No's that have accrued from that person, who always seems to be waiting to shut you down again.<br />
<br />
There are big No's that are like a punch in the face. There are slightly smaller but no less insistent No's that are like having a wall built around you. There are tens and hundreds of still smaller No's, on the surface less important, but that still fall like someone has upended a bucket of nails over your head.<br />
<br />
It would challenge the sunniest of dispositions. Mine was never particularly sunny to start with.<br />
<br />
Yes, I feel sorry for myself - it's an indulgence, I know. But I feel sorrier for the person who says No. It is awful to see that person's unhappiness and anxiousness. It is awful to see how they shut down possibilities and let things go undone so long that the sadness and stress of it is crushing.<br />
<br />
I would so dearly love to see this person looser and lighter. I want to see them learn to say 'Yes' and to see the freedom that it brings.<br />
<br />
I have joked in the past, a bitter taste in my mouth, that this must be what it's like to live with a sectarian divide. But even <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/world/europe/ian-paisley-northern-ireland-leader-dies.html?_r=0">Ian Paisley</a> said Yes, in the end.<br />
<br />
And yet.<br />
<br />
History shows that dark years of misery are still marked by momentous days.<br />
<br />
Last week was particularly bad for No's. As a result the weekend, predictably, saw tears and upset when the consequences came around.<br />
<br />
Then yesterday - there is no way of writing this but that sounds mundane, though trust me it was not - there was a Yes.<br />
<br />
In fact, there were several. One after another, after another, like the sound of bolts sliding open across a long-locked door.<br />
<br />
And she smiled, and her heart lifted, and with it so did mine. I know what an effort it is for her to take a path suggested by someone else. I am grateful, and very proud of her.<br />
<br />
<br />
A day like today is not a day for soundbites, really. But I feel the hand of history on our shoulders. I really do...<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-56156800624261425192014-07-14T10:54:00.001+01:002015-03-24T11:00:58.032+00:00School trip There's no-one else in the pool this morning. The rain has stopped and the morning sky is fine and clear, so the other early swimmers are filing past me to exercise outdoors.<br />
<br />
I barely notice them - glimpses of feet in flip flops that appear briefly at my eye level and disappear again as I emerge and submerge, furiously propelling myself down the silent blue lane marked out in orange ropes in front of me. I want to stay indoors. I want to be alone.<br />
<br />
This morning my girl departed on the school trip. It's a common enough event at this time of year. I wonder how many other parents are experiencing it right now. From those early spring evenings at the school receiving instructions from calm-voiced teachers, to the rather more urgently phrased summer letters home detailing travel times and required packing; the last week watching your child get progressively excited; the list making. The departing shot: "Don't worry about phoning - but do let me know you're ok!"<br />
<br />
Push, dive, kick, breathe.<br />
<br />
What must it be like, I think as I swim, to wave off your child with just a flicker of manageable worry - a normal parental twinge? What must it be like to see your child laughing with their friends, shoving excitedly on to the bus in a safe gaggle of chums, then sitting draped over each other, firing jokes back and forth with bright eyes and big grins? What must it be like to go back to your car with just a small tremor of sadness, knowing that by and large your child will be fine, will be happy, will have the time of their life and will come back full of tales of happy gang exploits?<br />
<br />
What must it be like, at this event, to be the parent of a child who does not have special needs?<br />
<br />
Push, dive, kick, breathe.<br />
<br />
I force the air out of me and watch the anxiety-laden bubbles stream past me under water, imagining their acrid pop on the surface. I breathe harder and swim faster til I can feel the muscles taut and burning along my arms and shoulders and thighs and calves. Embedded in the rhythm of my stroke is a silent chant: Please let her be ok. Please let her be ok. Please let her be ok.<br />
<br />
I tell myself she will be. She is brave and resourceful. She is glad to be going. She is excited. And the condition that means she will need extra help, that requires extra support and understanding, also has its own defence mechanism: she does not see many of the things I do. She did not see, this morning, how her classmates' eyes slid away as she approached to say hello, how the girls she saluted cheerily exchanged carefully flat glances at one another and replied in non-committal monotones. (I saw, and it was like being rabbit-punched in the throat - a moment of winded, gasping pain which I could not indulge. Instead I smiled brightly at my daughter and the dead-eyed girls edging away from us.)<br />
<br />
A bit later I watched her sitting in the coach, a little stiffly, possibly a bit nervous and working her way through the feelings arising from the noise and the excitement in the air around her. I wanted to jump up and down, cross my eyes and stick my tongue out - make her laugh, and relax. I didn't do any of those things of course. She would have been mortified. So instead we looked at each other silently either side of the glass - me smiling from a pavement of chatting milling parents, who all seemed to know each other doubtless from the parties and sleepovers to which my girl is not invited - and her, beautiful and inscrutable, like a Mona Lisa among crowds of holiday pre-teens.<br />
<br />
I looked at her and I remembered what she said in the car as we drove here today: "It's okay Mummy, I don't mind who I sit next to because everyone else will be saying 'oh sorry, I'm sitting with someone else'."<br />
<br />
The coach driver started the engine. The doors closed. The level of noise inside went up another notch. I put my fingers to my mouth and extended them quickly towards her, hoping to send love rather than embarrassment. And Grace smiled at me finally.<br />
<br />
They drove off. I walked to my car, keeping my face as still as possible, and drove to the gym.<br />
<br />
We are lucky. My daughter is doing really well at a good school that understands her. Many children with special educational needs wouldn't be able to go on this trip at all. Others might go, and find it much harder than she will. My daughter is lucky. She will enjoy much of this trip.<br />
<br />
Push, dive, kick, breathe.<br />
<br />
<br />
In the water, no-one can tell you are crying.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #c63dc1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i>I will be swimming a mile for autism on Sunday July 20, as part of a nationwide campaign to raise awareness. You don't need to sponsor me - but do join in. It's easy. Simply: </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #c63dc1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span><br />
<ol style="color: #666666; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><i>Do a mile in whatever way you choose - walking, cycling, running etc.</i></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><i>Post your #<strong>AMileForAutism</strong> photo to Twitter or Facebook on 20 July (not forgetting the all important hashtag!)</i></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;"><i>Text <strong>AMFA14</strong> and either <strong>£1</strong>, <strong>£2</strong>, <strong>£5</strong> or <strong>£10</strong> to <strong>70070</strong> to make a donation, then encourage friends to join in and do the same.</i></li>
</ol>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #c63dc1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i><br /></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #c63dc1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i>Click <a href="http://www.ambitiousaboutautism.org.uk/page/get_involved/events/details.cfm?articleId=143" style="color: #0094ff; text-decoration: none;">here</a> for more details.</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #c63dc1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span><br />
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<br />Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-33339269539340851652014-06-23T11:18:00.003+01:002015-03-24T11:02:41.642+00:00Pond LifeIt's 6am on a June morning. The skies are clear blue. A faint, sweet breeze rustles the branches of the trees outside my house. No one else is up. The street is quiet. It promises a lovely summer day.<br />
<br />
It's the perfect day for a run.<br />
<br />
Instead, I climb into my car and drive to the swimming pool.<br />
<br />
When I arrive there is a small queue of regulars waiting at the front door to be let in. They fall into two clear categories: the very old, who wake early and come to glide carefully, like small wise turtles, up and down in the slow lane; and the very fit, who leap out of bed to come and motor up and down in the outside pool - the temperature of which is kept seriously cold, for serious people.<br />
<br />
Then there's me. I keep telling myself it doesn't matter that I don't fit, because I'm not a swimmer, I'm a runner and I'm only here for a while.<br />
<br />
But it's been two months, and that's starting to feel a bit longer than a while.<br />
<br />
It's two months since I limped over the finish line of the London marathon and I haven't run since. I've seen a doctor, a physio, and an osteopath. They all have different opinions about what I might have done to my knee. I don't know what to do with so many different suggestions, so I'm not doing anything at all. That's to say - I'm not running. But I think about running every single day. And every day my knee reminds me, in various squeaks and twangs, and the occasional shooting pain if I'm starting to feel too optimistic, that it's not ready to be tested.<br />
<br />
But I'm really bad at sitting around. And I want to be fit for when I can run again. So I'm spending a lot of time in the pool.<br />
<br />
I don't like swimming. I've written about this before, so I won't bore you with it again, except to say that compared to running through fields of waving grass - and along tracks of fresh-smelling earth, in the fresh air and glorious, isolated, freedom - the up-and-down of the bob-dip-chlorine-sting while avoiding other people's toes and spit is really not doing it for me.<br />
<br />
But I am persevering.<br />
<br />
This morning, when the gym manager comes to let us all in, she advises that the indoor pool is closed because the chlorine levels are too high, so it's the outdoor pool only. A mutter goes up. I walk to the changing rooms behind three old ladies with candyfloss hair and velour tracksuits who are each dragging a small bag on wheels stuffed with potions and curlers and other, vital, post-swim kit.<br />
<br />
"Why are the chlorine levels so high?" one wonders aloud.<br />
<br />
"Someone had An Accident in there yesterday," says another, knowledgeably. "A number two."<br />
<br />
The third one tuts. "Children in the pool. What do you expect. Really."<br />
<br />
"Oh no," says the second one, mildly. "It wasn't a child. It was an adult."<br />
<br />
The first one squeaks, and so do I, but manage to turn it into a light cough in time.<br />
<br />
We go into the changing rooms. The ladies turn left. I turn right. I open a locker door, and start to get changed, grumbling to myself about being stuck doing the kind of sport so insanitary that you have to be doused in chemicals in order to protect you from other people's poo. I huff and puff, and brace for a cold dip.<br />
<br />
But when I get to the door to the outdoor pool, there's a gaggle of disgruntled Serious Swimmers blocking the way with their broad shoulders and tiny waists and lean sculpted thighs. (What? Oh <i>okay</i>, so this sport does have one thing going for it.) It turns out that the outdoor pool is shut too, because the water levels are too low. There's no swimming at all this morning.<br />
<br />
Everyone goes back to the changing rooms. I stand alone for a moment, frustrated - reluctant to pack up and go home but unable to think of an alternative. Then the janitor comes past and says he'll be testing the chlorine level of the indoor pool again in ten minutes and why don't I go to the steam room for a bit and then come back. So I do.<br />
<br />
When I re-emerge, pink and blinking, the janitor gives me a cheery thumbs-up. The pool is open and I am the only person there. I rush to it and dive in immediately, suppressing a whoop, and strike out.<br />
<br />
By the fifth lap I realise that I am smiling to myself in the way I used to when a run was going really well. By the tenth lap I realise that I didn't think about the last five laps because I was enjoying myself so much. By the twentieth lap I become aware that no part of my body is hurting me, at all, and that this is the first time in weeks and weeks that I have felt so whole and healthy. By the twenty-fifth lap I feel as though I am becoming longer and stronger. By the fiftieth lap, I have abandoned all conscious thought, lost in blissful blue zen.<br />
<br />
After seventy laps I stop and surface and shake my head and clean my goggles. Then I do a quick back flip under water in quiet celebration. I haven't felt this good in a long time. I could keep swimming for ever, but a glance at the Olympic clock on the wall tells me I have to go home.<br />
<br />
I pull myself out and glance around, and realise that I'm no longer alone. There's a man at the other end of the pool, in the lane beside mine. He isn't swimming, but is squatting in the water so that it comes up to his shoulders and the tip of his luxuriant beard, which I see now that he appears to be grooming.<br />
<br />
I suppress a shudder and go for a very hot shower. But I'm already planning when to come back again.<br />
<br />
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<i>I will be swimming a mile for autism on Sunday July 20, as part of a nationwide campaign to raise awareness. You don't need to sponsor me - but do join in. It's easy. Simply: </i><br />
<ol style="color: #666666; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<li><i>Do a mile in whatever way you choose - walking, cycling, running etc.</i></li>
<li><i>Post your #<strong>AMileForAutism</strong> photo to Twitter or Facebook on 20 July (not forgetting the all important hashtag!)</i></li>
<li><i>Text <strong>AMFA14</strong> and either <strong>£1</strong>, <strong>£2</strong>, <strong>£5</strong> or <strong>£10</strong> to <strong>70070</strong> to make a donation, then encourage friends to join in and do the same.</i></li>
</ol>
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<i>Click <a href="http://www.ambitiousaboutautism.org.uk/page/get_involved/events/details.cfm?articleId=143">here</a> for more details.</i><br />
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Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-53661288598194961212014-05-29T16:55:00.000+01:002015-03-24T11:01:25.169+00:00And still, they don't get itIn the wake of Elliot Rodger's actions, I wrote <a href="http://courage-is.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/violent-and-wrong-eliot-rodgers-crime.html">this blog</a> about the mistaken and painful perception that a diagnosis of autism and Asperger's Syndrome can make someone a killer.<br />
<br />
That day, I also complained to the BBC about its responsibility not to perpetuate this myth, because its online news story about Rodger pointed out his Asperger's diagnosis - which seems to have been wrong, as his family <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-frantic-parents-isla-vista-shootings-20140525-story.html">said later</a> they "suspected" but had had no formal diagnosis - in a way that strongly suggested it might be a factor at play and, in my view, invited readers to make the link.<br />
<br />
In the same complaint, I protested the BBC's decision to include at the end of its online news story lines of additional information about Asperger's, because it drove home the implicit suggestion that this was a major factor in the killing.<br />
<br />
This is the very disappointing response I received today:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">"We understand you were concerned that our article referred to Elliot Rodger having Asperger Syndrome.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; line-height: 18.459999084472656px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; line-height: 18.459999084472656px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">This information was provided by the family’s lawyer and is included as background detail about the young man involved. There was no suggestion that his Asperger’s led to him committing murder or that people with Asperger’s are predisposed to such violence.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; line-height: 18.459999084472656px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; line-height: 18.459999084472656px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">However, given his own comments in his manifesto and video, he was concerned at his apparent inability to form and develop relationships, and it could be that his Asperger’s played some part in those problems. So clearly this was information worth including. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; line-height: 18.459999084472656px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; line-height: 18.459999084472656px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">But like people without Asperger’s, those with the condition are individuals who respond differently to various situations, and we have neither stated nor suggested that Elliot Rodger’s diagnosis was the direct cause of the killings.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">" </span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
Now, I understand how entrenched some people's mistaken views about autism and violent behaviour are. If I had not been aware of this, some of the comments left at the end of my last blog would have left me in no doubt.<br />
<br />
But I don't understand why the BBC does not understand. I also don't understand why it failed to see the point I was making about its responsibility not to <i>suggest.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
(And I don't understand why the BBC failed to answer my complaint about the fulsome additional information included at the bottom of the Rodger news story about Asperger's Syndrome - how it's diagnosed, what it means, how some individuals might behave - though I do wonder whether that might have anything to do with the fact that those lines quietly disappeared sometime mid-afternoon that day as lots of people joined me in complaining loudly across various social media about the BBC's coverage.)<br />
<br />
So I've written back to the BBC again. This time, I've asked: if Rodger had been left-handed, would the BBC have included that information as a relevant detail? It's about as relevant as his Asperger's diagnosis. If he had been deaf, would it have included lines and lines of detail about that medical condition? (And can you imagine the outcry if it had?)<br />
<br />
One of the few sensible things I read in the immediate aftermath of what happened in Santa Barbara was the statement by Mark Lever, chief executive of Britain's National Autistic Society. So I'm going to give him the last word, below. And I'm going to hope that the BBC is reading.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; line-height: 20.82666778564453px;">The shootings in California are shocking and our thoughts are with everyone caught up in this tragedy.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; line-height: 20.82666778564453px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We would urge the public not to jump to conclusions about reports stating that the perpetrator had Asperger syndrome, a form of autism, or to associate the actions of one individual with a whole section of society.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; line-height: 20.82666778564453px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The vast majority of individuals with autism are law abiding and respect the rules of society. Indeed, in many cases, individuals with autism are unusually concerned to keep to the letter of the law, due to the nature of the disability."</span></span>Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-39993899109547578212014-05-25T11:24:00.001+01:002015-03-24T11:02:14.832+00:00Violent and wrong: Elliot Rodger's crime should not taint my childAnother boy, another gun.<br />
<br />
A little later, another photograph.<br />
<br />
Brown hair, brown eyes. Slanting cheekbones. A way of tilting the head.<br />
<br />
Scrutiny. Debate. Then - aha! He had Asperger's.<br />
<br />
The pain of the parents of the children killed by Elliot Rodger is unimaginable. The pain of the parents of Elliot Rodger is unfathomable.<br />
<br />
What I can describe is the pain of a another parent, one whose child has Aspergers and who is this morning trying to formulate a response to yet another story in which their child's diagnosis is being held up as an explanation for murder.<br />
<br />
While I type this, my daughter is asleep upstairs. It's half-term, and she's tired. Her room is still dark, the curtains closed. I went in earlier to wake her, then changed my mind. She was so fast asleep, so lost in her dreams, that I couldn't bear to disturb her. Instead I stood in the shadows and listened to her soft breathing and to the spring rain pattering on the windows. I looked at her and I thought: my little girl. What will the world make of you now?<br />
<br />
I haven't slept. I am indignant, fearful and full of rage - like many others out there adding their voices to this collective shriek of pain. I am in the worst possible state to attempt to present an argument. But when others are shouting such nonsense so loudly, I feel as though I have to try.<br />
<br />
For as long as I have known that my daughter was autistic, I have fought against autism stereotypes. My daughter's autism is an essential part of her, but it is not the essence of her. She is sweet and funny and clever and sparky and eccentric and arty .. for so long my biggest frustration was that everyone wanted to label her as Rainman. The number of times Dustin Hoffman's stuttering mathematical genius has been cited in conversations about my daughter's diagnosis is so many I have lost count.<br />
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But faced with the conversations I am reading today - the ignorant, block-headed tweets and comments about "kids with Asperger's disease who kill other kids" - I could almost wish back those days of clumsy cliche. They seem so innocent now. That my daughter's diagnosis puts her, in so many lazy, unthinking people's minds, alongside the likes of Rodger and Adam Lanza, who fatally shot twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary school, is horrifying.<br />
<br />
It's very hard to speak for all people with Asperger's Syndrome. To those denouncing them all this morning as potential mass murderers, I would point out that when you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. However, if I may be allowed one generalisation with which to fight back - most people with Asperger's don't want "revenge against humanity." To say today that all people with Asperger's are potential killers is as reprehensible and wrong-headed as Rodger's own assertion that blonde women were collectively to blame for his unhappiness.<br />
<br />
Listen to me. Listen to me.<br />
<br />
Autistic people are far more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.<br />
<br />
Some people with autism have difficulty understanding other people. But it does not follow to say that every person who has difficulty understanding other people is like that because he or she is autistic.<br />
<br />
To say that Elliot Rodger did this because he is on the autism spectrum is like saying Elliot Rodger did this because he was a man, and white.<br />
<br />
Autistic people who commit these acts are no more representative of people with autism than white male serial killers are representative of white males.<br />
<br />
Listen.<br />
<br />
As Emily Willingham wrote <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2014/05/21/no-timothy-mcveigh-was-not-autistic/">in her fabulous paper for Forbes </a>earlier this week, the real unifying feature of most mass murderers isn't autism or brain injury, "it's anger and rage, often blasted outward at innocent targets by means of easily accessible firearms."<br />
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And in this case, not only is the role played by firearms far more relevant than where Rodger might have been on the spectrum, but - as Jessica Valenti <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/24/elliot-rodgers-california-shooting-mental-health-misogyny">writes in the Guardian today</a> - to dismiss him as a madman also glosses over the role that misogyny and a sexist society played.<br />
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I would write more, I would write on and on, but my daughter has just woken up and come down to see me. She is standing in front of me smiling, hair mussed, anticipating a good day. I tell her I love her. She tells me that she loves me back, then goes to cuddle her little sister.<br />
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There is a lot to be sifted through and assessed in the Santa Barbara killings. Of all of these things, Asperger's is a detail. It is not a pre-determination.<br />
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<i>Grace Under Pressure: Going The Distance as an Asperger's Mum is published by Piatkus in the UK and by New World Library in the U.S.</i><br />
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<br />Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-81097541867717353352014-04-14T19:57:00.000+01:002014-04-14T19:57:34.508+01:00Don't give up. Ever.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Thank you to everyone who supported me: family, friends, Twitter followers and Facebook chums; fellow runners and complete strangers; everyone who urged me to keep putting one foot in front of the other; who sent love and gave me the certainty that I could do it because they believed I could.<br />
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Together we have raised a huge amount of money for a wonderful charity that helps children with autism thrive and achieve. And we have shown one girl, again, that we stand with her, and will keep going with her, even under pressure.Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-81554569591849903802014-04-07T13:34:00.000+01:002014-04-07T13:34:43.481+01:00DoomI'm sitting in the doctor's examination room with my trousers off. Her neat, careful fingers are probing the soft area around my kneecap.<br />
<br />
I watch her, and think: "Please tell me what to do."<br />
<br />
She straightens up and says: "Well, I can't tell you what to do."<br />
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Then she says: "I don't think you'll be able to make it round."<br />
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Then she sees the look on my face and says: "You could start it, and just do a bit."<br />
<br />
Then she looks at me again and says: "Or you could walk it."<br />
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I am struggling not to cry. I am struggling to replace my 'oh fuck' face with something blander and more grown-up. I can tell by the way my GP is looking at me that I am failing miserably.<br />
<br />
For the last fourteen weeks I have thought of nothing but running this marathon. For the last three weeks I have thought about nothing but whether I can run this marathon after all. I have obsessed, every moment of every day, about how much my knee or my back is hurting me and what this means for my prospects of running.<br />
<br />
My injuries have taken it in turns to torment me. For days, nothing. Then - a dull, nagging throb. Then - bam, a zinging trail of pain all the way up the side of my leg, or across my back. For a while, I couldn't figure out which was worse. Right now, my back is quiet while my knee, sparking and pulsing, makes stairs and hills an uncomfortable forecast of what awaits if I attempt to put it through 26.2 miles in six day's time.<br />
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Six days. I've trained for 14 weeks and now with six days to go I have to go right back to the start and figure out whether I'm going to do this.<br />
<br />
I ask my doctor: "What about a steroid injection? What about really strong painkillers and sports tape? Can you give me enough stuff just to make it around, and then I'll rest it?"<br />
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She looks at me, a wrinkle of doubt in her nose.<br />
<br />
"I can give you very strong anti-inflammatories that will help. I can give you very strong painkillers that will stop the pain. The thing is, if we do that and you run on it, then you won't know how much you'll be damaging it. You might find that you can't run on it again afterwards."<br />
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I gape. "What - ever?"<br />
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"Well.. for some time," she answers.<br />
<br />
I think about not running the marathon, and I feel sick.<br />
<br />
I think about starting the marathon and running a few miles and having to abandon it, and I feel sick.<br />
<br />
I think about starting the marathon and running a few miles and then walking the rest, for hours and hours, past all the crowds of people cheering and yelling everyone on, and feeling such a fraud and a loser, and I feel sick. I think about limping down Birdcage Walk seven hours after the start of the race, to see the crowds have melted away, and the litter blowing in the breeze, and I feel sick.<br />
<br />
I take the prescription from my doctor and I walk home. As I walk I think about the huge amount of money that my friends and family have pledged for me, have promised in support of a wonderful charity, Ambitious about Autism. I think about the work they do, and I think about the amazing school they run. I think about the day I visited, as a new patron, and watched a little girl - outnumbered as ever by the number of boys with autism - in her class, quietly bending to a task with a smile as her worker sat beside her. I think about my own daughter, who doesn't get to decide that she can't have autism today, sorry. I walk and I think and I think.<br />
<br />
By the time I get home I've decided.<br />
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I've got a place in one of the biggest and best races in the world. And I've got a vest that says I'm part of a team of people who are ambitious about making things better for children who have autism.<br />
<br />
I'm going to start the race. I'm going to pass over the start line to say thank you to everyone who sponsored me, and to say, to my daughter, I'm with you. And then - we'll see what happens. Maybe luck will be on my side and I'll make it to the finish line. Maybe I'll have to go home after three miles. Either way, I'll have been part of it, in some way. It's enough.<br />
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<i>My new training plan.</i></div>
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<i>To support me, and support Ambitious about Autism's aim to help children with autism learn, thrive and achieve, please click <a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=SophieWalker">here</a></i></div>
<br />Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-66634237845182924542014-04-02T00:37:00.001+01:002015-03-24T11:03:50.675+00:00On World Autism Awareness Day, an invitation to the teaching communityRight now, in many countries, lots of young girls are getting ready - with great reluctance - for school. They are getting dressed and brushing their hair, while their stomach knots with apprehension. They are fastening shut their schoolbags and putting on their blazers. They are moving very slowly, putting off for as long as they can the moment when they have to leave.<br />
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Later, when they come back, their parents will ask how their day at school went. Some of these girls will say nothing. Some will say something. Some will shout. Some will throw things, or hit someone.<br />
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Many of them will go quickly to their bedrooms, to a safe place. And there, when they are alone, one or some of the following things will happen. They will cry. They will make themselves sick. They will cut or harm themselves, until they bleed and feel better. They will do these things again and again.<br />
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The parents may know. They may not know. They may find out now, or they may find out later. When they find out, they will most likely go to the school. They will likely say: "Please can you help us. Our daughter finds school very hard. She has autism."<br />
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They might add, by way of explanation: "The stress of the social environment - the noise and the scrutiny and the rules - along with worry about grades/friendships/bullying/ is making her ill."<br />
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When this happens, here's what the school will say:<br />
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"We are very sorry to hear that. Let us work together to get your daughter the support she needs."<br />
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Actually, that's not true. Or at least it's so rarely true that it's not the story I'm going to tell here. Here's what the school - the headteacher, the teacher, the head of year, the special educational needs co-ordinator - more often say instead (and these are all examples of what they have actually said to some of the many parents of girls with autism that I talk to):<br />
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"Well, she's fine in school, so it must be a problem at home."<br />
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"She needs to be less sensitive/get a thicker skin/toughen up a bit."<br />
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"She needs to learn to shut out distractions."<br />
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"She brings it (the bullying/the stress/the tears) on herself."<br />
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"It's better that she doesn't tell anyone she has Asperger's Syndrome. It will only make things worse."<br />
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"There's no point applying for a statement of educational needs/extra teaching support because she won't get it. She's fine in school, you see .."<br />
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This time last year, on World Autism Awareness Day, I wrote <a href="http://courage-is.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/its-world-autism-awareness-day-so-what.html">this blog</a> about the process I had undergone, following my daughter's diagnosis, of learning to understand and be fully aware of autism.<br />
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This year, on World Autism Awareness Day, I would like to extend an invitation to the teaching community to do the same.<br />
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Teachers, particularly in Britain, are under a lot of pressure. Bureaucracy and paperwork and targets and endless new demands, combined with cuts to pensions and salaries, and the morale-sapping decline of respect for their work, are causing droves of teachers to leave the profession. Many of those who stay are wondering how much longer they can stick it out for.<br />
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But.<br />
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Teachers have a responsibility to understand the children they are teaching, even if just a little. They have a responsibility to promote tolerance and acceptance of difference. Pastoral care is not a 'nice to have' when it comes to teaching.<br />
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If you are a teacher you should know that autism rates are rising. The <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html">latest report</a> on this, from America's Center for Disease Control and Prevention just last week, says that 1 in 68 children now have autism. That's a 30 percent jump in two years. It's not because vast numbers of children suddenly 'got' autism overnight, though there is certainly something happening to increase the incidence of autism worldwide. In part, these new numbers are because doctors are getting better and better at spotting autism, and diagnosing it.<br />
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If doctors are starting to understand and to see autism, shouldn't teachers?<br />
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My daughter goes to a great school with excellent support. We are very lucky. I know some fantastic teachers. One is my clever, sensitive sister, who recognised some of the symptoms of autism in my daughter while I was still a long way from understanding.<br />
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But there are unfortunately a lot of teachers out there who are not fantastic. There are a lot of teachers out there who do not know much about autism, and have no interest in finding out more. There are a lot of teachers who think autism is something that happens to other children, not the children who come to their school. Not the children they teach.<br />
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Let's change this. It's not that difficult. It doesn't require new tests, or benchmarks, or quotas. It just means reading a few things - like <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/mar/31/autism-awareness-teaching-tips-lesson-resources">this,</a> perhaps. It means applying empathy - yes, that thing that autistic children are supposed to be so short of. (If my daughter saw someone upset or in trouble at school it would never, ever occur to her to think that they must somehow have brought it upon themselves.)<br />
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It means making the job of SENCo - special educational needs co-ordinator, as they are called in Britain - and its equivalent elsewhere, into a job that is valued and important, and done properly, rather that the thing that someone does one day a week, or the role that gets given to the teacher who's killing time before retirement, or the job that gets given to the teacher who's not very good at anything else but is too hard to fire.<br />
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All of the examples I gave at the beginning of this article were about girls for a reason. I'm not suggesting for a moment that boys with autism don't suffer at school too. But I don't have a son with autism. I have a daughter, and from what I see and hear from other parents of daughters, our daughters are suffering. They are suffering particularly hard. When teachers don't understand autism, they particularly don't understand girls with autism. They don't understand that girls are more likely to hide their autism, to copy their peers, to camouflage and keep quiet while they suffer. They don't understand that girls with autism are suffering serious mental health issues because of the strain of being taught by people who have no idea of what their lives are like or who they really are.<br />
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I don't claim this as the most important battle in understanding autism. But it is one we must fight.<br />
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And yet - it doesn't have to be a battle. We are the parents who are interested in our children. We are the parents who appreciate the importance of our childrens' educators, and the difference that they can make to their lives. Invite us to our children's schools, and we will come. Ask us to contribute to our children's teachers' efforts and we will. We already are. We have enough battles to fight already. So, by God, do teachers.<br />
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Awareness of autism starts with understanding how much we still don't understand about it, in order to learn what kind of support to give to those who need it. It's ok to say you don't know very much about autism, or how it can look different in boys and girls. Here's your chance to change that. Can we talk?<br />
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<i>To find out more about autism and World Autism Awareness Day, click <a href="http://www.autism.org.uk/">here</a></i><br />
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<i>To find out more about how you can help children and young people with autism thrive and achieve, click<a href="http://www.ambitiousaboutautism.org.uk/page/index.cfm"> here</a></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Want to make a difference? <a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=SophieWalker">Support me on April 13</a> and your money will go directly towards helping improve services for children with autism and spreading understanding and awareness of the condition.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Grace under Pressure: Going the distance as an Asperger's Mum, is published by Piatkus and available <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grace-Under-Pressure-distance-Aspergers/dp/074995826X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top">here</a></i><br />
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<br />Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-62958698243292768732014-03-17T12:55:00.000+00:002014-03-17T12:55:11.855+00:00Demolition DerbyIt's the last four weeks of my training.<br />
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I am averaging more than 25 miles a week, sprinting and lunging and popping push-ups and running for upwards of three hours every Saturday morning.<br />
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It's been 12 weeks since I started preparing for the <a href="http://www.virginmoneylondonmarathon.com/">London Marathon 2014</a>. The rain has eased. The mornings are bright. The evenings, though still dark, are less cold.<br />
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The anticipation is building.<br />
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I should be feeling like an athlete, toned and ready.<br />
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Instead I am knackered, and sore.<br />
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I don't feel like an athlete. I feel like an old car, being driven at faster and faster speeds until everything is vibrating, and nuts and bolts loosen and ping off. Any minute now the windscreen wipers will start to flip crazily of their own accord.<br />
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I so hoped this time my final preparations would be happy. The signs were good - the easy 14-mile run that was an almost religious experience; the 5k sprint I did in 26 minutes. I thought that this time I'd cracked it - the training, not my poor old bones. I thought I would fly through my last training runs of 17, 18 and 20 miles.<br />
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I did not think I would not be repeating my experience of 2012 when I spent the last four weeks pre-marathon mostly on the osteopath's table.<br />
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This afternoon, I'm off to the osteopath's table.<br />
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Saturday's run started off so well. I succeeded in getting nearly accidentally-on-purpose lost, essential when undertaking runs of this length. Doing laps for 180 minutes would test my sanity more than my legs. However, getting totally lost would risk running up some rotten hills, given my local geography. I have to find a happy medium of nearly not knowing where I am - sufficiently distracted by my surroundings to clock up the miles enjoyably, while still able to run home via routes somewhere close to sea level.<br />
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The first hour was fine. The next five minutes was fine. The next five minutes revealed a niggle. The five minutes after that involved a lot of pain. The shock of it was followed by plummeting despair. I kept running, but headed for home. I paused my stopwatch, and stood in the hallway, trying not to cry and wondering what to do.<br />
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"I don't know what to do," I said to my husband, and started crying.<br />
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"What do you want to do?" he asked me carefully.<br />
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I knew what I wanted to do. I turned around, and went back out, and started running again.<br />
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The pain felt familiar. It felt like the pain from last time. It started in the right side of my lower back, then probed into my hip and groin and progressed remorselessly down into the side of my knee.<br />
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I ate energy bars and wiped tears away and kept going. I turned on my ipod. I turned it up loud. For a short while, I managed to push the pain into the background. I got to a very doggy bit of the local park and was distracted as ever by dodging the terriers. This time, it helped.<br />
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Amazingly, and wonderfully, I got a second wind at 13 miles, when I realised that I'd matched my second-best half-marathon time. This is not a fast time. Don't get excited. But I got excited, and that helped too, for a while.<br />
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Fifteen miles was grim. Sixteen miles was grimmer. During the seventeenth mile the pain was like sparks inside my head.<br />
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I finished, and walked home on legs that felt like glass. I went on Facebook and made a joke of how bad it had been. Then I sat in the bath, and wondered what to do next.<br />
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This afternoon, I find out what to do next. My osteo appointment is in a couple of hours. I still hurt.<br />
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In the meantime, I'm watching my Twitter feed - full of fast, hearty runners whooping with joy at doing 20 miles faster than last week. I feel like Ebeneezer Scrooge. Where are the people who had a crap run? Where are the people who hated every minute of the last hour and could barely make it up the stairs afterwards? Surely I can't be alone?<br />
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Don't get me wrong. I'm not sad not to be fast. I have always been a plodder - out and proud. My marathons are as much about raising money as raising mileage. I ran my last (first) London Marathon for my daughter, who has Asperger's Syndrome, and for the wonderful <a href="http://www.autism.org.uk/">National Autistic Society</a>, who supported us throughout the long, painful process of diagnosis and finding support. I thought I should run another one for other people's daughters, and sons, who have autism, and need more support than they're getting. My ambition in running this marathon this time is to raise squillions (or at least several thousands) for <a href="http://www.ambitiousaboutautism.org.uk/page/index.cfm">Ambitious About Autism</a>, which believes children with autism should thrive, and achieve.<br />
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I won't ever clock a time under four and a half hours, and I'm ok with that. I salute all of you who run like whippets. Of course I'm envious. But I'm also realistic.<br />
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It's just that I hoped this time wouldn't hurt quite so much.<br />
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While I wait for my appointment I'm taking painkillers. But I've realised that the best anaesthetic is this one, right <a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=SophieWalker">here</a>. It's what ensures that whatever else may happen between now and April 13, I will get around the course and across the finish line. Even if the doors fall off.<br />
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<br />Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-76798567660055831852014-02-24T16:01:00.000+00:002014-02-24T16:21:57.215+00:00Life's a piece of shit, when you look at itI have been unwell, and now I'm starting to feel better.<br />
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The sun came out today, and the air was warm. Some of the trees are starting to make cherry blossom. There are snowdrops in the back garden.<br />
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So I went for a run - the first one this year without my anorak. A marker! Things are Getting Better.<br />
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I decided for a change to go along an old favourite route that has been impassable for a while because of the weeks of rain and strong winds. For a long time it has been reduced to bog and broken branches. Today I decided to go along and see if the going had improved.<br />
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I'm on down time this week - short, restful runs ahead of the Silverstone half-marathon on Sunday. It's a welcome change from the long on-road routes I've been following to get the miles in in preparation for the London marathon in April. I don't like running on pavements as cars pass by me. I don't like audiences to my red face and wheezy uphill progress. I've missed the trails of the nearby nature reserve and the raggedy path through my favourite fields.<br />
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Anyway, the sun was shining, and I was feeling well and things were Getting Better, so I thought it was surely a sign that it was also time to go back to my favourite route.<br />
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To begin with all was fine. It was pretty damp, but that was to be expected, and it was nothing I couldn't handle. The fallen trees had all been cut and stacked. There was quite a bit of sawdust to soak up some of the mud.<br />
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Several bike trails helped. For the first mile I followed the flattened route laid down by multiple cyclists that led me through the marshiest parts of the path.<br />
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The sun went in pretty quickly, but that was ok too. I'd warmed up by then. And it was so nice to be running in just sleeves rather than the jumper and coat and hat I've been puffing around in for the last eight weeks.<br />
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Then I got to the top of a rise and looked down into acres of black bog. A horse in the nearby field whickered softly. I'm glad someone's getting a laugh out of my predicament, I thought, and stepped forward.<br />
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To begin with, I tried to edge around the side of it, running on tip-toes and hopping from island to island amid the drowned furrows. Very soon I was very tired. But I was too far in to turn back, so I pressed on.<br />
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Around the next corner I came to two hikers, stumbling upwards with walking poles and arctic boots.<br />
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"I say, well done," said the man.<br />
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"It's a bit muddy," said the woman.<br />
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I feigned a cheery wave and ploughed on past them. As I went out of sight around the next corner I misjudged a dry patch for a wet patch and went in up to my ankles. I said a very rude word very loudly. Small black birds went up like an exclamation from one of the bushes to my right.<br />
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At this point I knew that the path went down for another mile and then up for another mile and a half before I would emerge onto roadside. My attempts at hopping between seemingly safe bits weren't working and I was knackered, half-way into what was supposed to be a recovery run.<br />
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"Ah, f- it," I told the birds, and ran straight down the middle of the path.<br />
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There's something exhilarating about taking the dirtiest, nastiest route. I challenged it to break me. I whooped and laughed as I skidded and jumped and ran faster the dirtier I got.<br />
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I was feeling well, and things were Getting Better and even the mud didn't matter.<br />
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Then I fell into a dog shit.<br />
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(This is an event that would challenge the most talented of writers, so from where I sit it seemed pointless to even try to dress it up. And anyway, you can't polish a turd. So to speak.)<br />
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You'd think that among that amount of mud I would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between filth and faeces but reader, I could.<br />
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Now I know that many of the routes I enjoy running along are also enjoyed by dog owners. I have on occasion had a teeny weeny grumble about being chased by these dogs, or having to run around their owners clustered across the path having a nice long chat, oblivious to their little darlings' behaviour. I thought I had come to terms with the fact that these people - along with the ramblers who come downhill at me in pairs while I am coming uphill and force me to run balanced on the verge beside them - were just part of the scenery of being lucky enough in run in the semi-rural limits of London.<br />
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But finding the Taj Mahal of turds smeared up my leg and splattered - whisper it - possibly <i>across my face - </i>I suddenly felt very different.<br />
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Also, I didn't feel very well any more.<br />
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I kept going, then slipped again - in mud this time - and found that I was crying. I kept going, snivelling and hoping that no one would see me.<br />
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My path home seemed like a very long one. My path to feeling well again seemed even longer. I felt very sorry for myself. I felt very depressed.<br />
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Then I skidded again, and this time it was a proper pratfall. My arms windmilled, my knees went in opposite directions. I think I made an involuntary "Ag" sort of noise.<br />
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And then I started laughing.<br />
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And then the sun came out again.<br />
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And I had reached the end of the mud.<br />
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And then, after a good strong mile-long finish, I was home.<br />
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I didn't look at myself in the mirror. I put my clothes straight into the washing machine and myself straight into the shower.<br />
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I am getting better. There will always be shit. The trick is to keep going. And to try not to fall in it.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;"><i>No, I don't fancy cleaning them either</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: magenta;"><i>Help me keep running, and help supporting children with autism. Please click <a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=SophieWalker">here</a>. Your support means everything and makes all the difference. </i></span></div>
Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-91576140265567443742014-01-21T13:03:00.000+00:002014-01-21T13:03:03.723+00:00Reasons to run, number 678,124,954When the sun goes in again<br />
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and the mornings feel like you're sliding away into the dark<br />
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and all the words that might make you feel better are all words that you've used before, so many times, and it feels too much, too much to have to use them all again, to dig them all out and order them because it would just feel like you were kidding yourself or going through the motions<br />
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and anyway, really, three strikes and you're out, you should have a handle on this by now, get a grip, you're making people uncomfortable, stop being so self-absorbed, it's not about you, its about her, she's the one who needs your help, who tunes out more and more now or loses her rag so loudly, who watches her siblings go out to parties and sleepovers, who gets left behind and is never invited, so how dare you get upset or cry because its not about you its about her its about her<br />
<br />
- but you are the person who has to sort it out, and keep encouraging and be positive and to do that you have to keep going even when all you can do is wonder what words to use and, while you're wondering that, listen to other people's words,<br />
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which fall like blows<br />
<br />
like this one:<br />
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"I can't teach her any more. I can't - I'm not trained to work with These People - I'm very frustrated."<br />
<br />
and this one:<br />
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"So, then, we'd like you all to look at your children when they are resting, or relaxing, and see what they are doing, and see what they like, and make a note. Perhaps that's something that you could encourage them to do in clubs, to meet friends."<br />
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(this is it? this is the sum total of your advice? don't you think i'm doing that? don't you think i've been doing that for years and years and years?)<br />
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and this one:<br />
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"He's not the first." "To be mean to you?" "To think I am incapable of getting hurt."<br />
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(and i'm wiping away tears in the dark before my husband sees i'm crying at the tv again)<br />
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and it's just<br />
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too much<br />
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so i run<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #c63dc1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #c63dc1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i>Click<a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=SophieWalker" style="color: #0094ff; text-decoration: none;"> here</a> to find out how I'm aiming, via running, to help children with autism and Asperger's Syndrome learn, thrive and achieve.</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #c63dc1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
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<br />Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-28309952994239164422014-01-06T10:48:00.000+00:002014-01-06T10:48:55.709+00:00Happy New YearIt is the middle of the night. I was fast asleep and now I am wide awake. I lie motionless for a moment and try to figure out what has woken me.<div>
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It only takes a moment before I hear it: Drip. Drip. Drip. A pause. And then another. A pause. And then another. Drip.</div>
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There is water coming into the bedroom. Now that I can hear it, I can hear too the rain and wind whipping at the windows and battering the house. I reach over to check the time: it's four o'clock in the morning. In three hours the holiday is over and everyone has to get up and go to work and to school.</div>
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Correction - the holiday is over right now.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
I lean over and nudge my husband awake.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"We've got a leak," I whisper to him. He's awake instantly. Then there are lights on and moving and checking the attic and the windows and tip-toeing not to wake the children and whispering and putting down something to catch the water. My eyes feel scoured out and my head thumps with tiredness.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
After a while, we put the lights out and get back into bed and try to sleep.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I can't sleep.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I am worried about going back to work and leaving my lovely girls. In particular I am worried about how Grace will cope with going back to school. Her school experience has improved vastly, almost beyond measure, at her new secondary. But still, it is often overwhelming for her and she gets very tired. The last two weeks of the last term were a maelstrom of tears and scenes and upset and forgetting and losing and needing to sleep and needing to be quiet, while routines moved and excitement built and lights blazed and daylight diminished and the world seemed to be tipped off-kilter.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I lie awake and listen to the drip and I worry.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
After half an hour of this I am even more awake. I need to go to sleep, I tell myself, so I can be on good form to help Grace start term in - I check - two and a half hours. I need to go to sleep, I tell myself, so I can stay calm and happy and optimistic if she wakes to be none of those things herself. I check the time again. Five minutes later I check it again. My headache tightens.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
At this point, out of nowhere, I remember the run I did on Sunday morning. It pops into my head unbidden and makes me smile into the darkness.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What a lovely, lovely run that was. New shoes, ready legs, starbursts in icy puddles. The air smelled of iron and the tang of forest mulch. The sun came out, like a reward. And then there was that wonderful moment, about three-quarters of the way through, when I realised that it was easy, so easy, and that I was flying, and I was smiling so widely that a passing car beeped at me, like it was saying hello to the local loony, and I didn't care because I loved my legs and my body and whoever was in that car and really, everyone in the world in fact, because I knew that everything, all of it, was just fine.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I lie in the darkness and laugh gently to myself at what I must have looked like and how great it felt, and I remember again why I run and I remember again that everything will be fine and that I can do this. Finally, sleep comes.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Just less than two hours later, the door flings open and Betty marches in, nightdress swinging, clutching a soft toy and what looks like a collection of her clothing, already mid-sentence: "..so Mummy, I thought... would you...? Teddy needs..." and she's climbing in, pressing her little toes into my side and elbowing space between my husband and me and there goes that last bit of sleep. I pull her to me briefly and squeeze her and kiss her soft cheek and re-direct her queries to my husband. I sit up and move my leaden legs out of bed. I pause, and think again of that run, and then I square my shoulders and go to Grace's bedroom.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
My big girl is fast asleep. I get in beside her and put my arms around her and I hug her awake. For a brief moment she protests and then she smiles, eyes still closed, and hugs me back. She smells of vanilla and the soft stuff of dreams. I tell her I love her. She murmurs that she loves me. We count to three together, gently in the darkness, and then we both get up.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A short while later I wave her off at the front door. She steps outside into the dark and the rain and for a moment shudders. Then she pulls her hood over her head and turns to me and pulls a mock-groaning face and smiles and says 'Bye' and I say 'Bye, darling'. And both of us know that it's going to be alright.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>If you liked this, or recognised some of it, or would like to know more, please consider supporting me in my London Marathon attempt this year. Click<a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=SophieWalker"> here</a> to find out how I'm aiming, via running, to help children with autism and Asperger's Syndrome learn, thrive and achieve.</i></div>
<div>
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<div>
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Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-82476252469618690502013-12-01T12:01:00.001+00:002013-12-02T15:27:42.771+00:00Making it Painless, like Potter<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I'm running, and it's all wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">My head is down, when it should be up. My shoulders
are round, when they should be back. My back is curved, when it should be
straight. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">My knees - oh dear. My knees go in, when they
should go out, and my feet go out, when they should go in. My heels go down when they should go up, and my toes go up when they should go down.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">How I have managed to run any races at all - let
alone finish them - seems a mystery.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The scene of my latest embarrassment is a quiet
tree-lined dead-end road beside the local golf course. Amelia my trainer has
taken me out for our first session in a long time. She is assessing me before
we start formal marathon training, and she's not very happy with what she sees.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">It's been so long since I did any strength work
that I’m running like an old lady. All of my bad habits have got worse, and
Amelia is warning me that unless I fix them, I’m in danger of experiencing the
same excruciating back pain that poleaxed me during my training for London
2012.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">So I’m listening. I don’t like what I hear. I’m ashamed
by it. Some of it is the result of behaving like an arse, frankly. For most of this summer and autumn I ran random distances, rarely. I drank and I ate too much, and I went running with hangovers and indigestion. I shuffled, rather than ran. I didn’t do
any sprints and the only intervals I completed were very short ones between
opening bottles of wine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Amelia gives me a look. She has a way of doing this
very politely, I should add. But I still feel it. Amelia ran the Marathon des
Sables this year. She’s planning for her next challenge to be the Mont Blanc
100. (That’s 100 miles up a mountain covered in ice.) I am 6ft 1 to her 5 ft 7,
and I feel very small.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Amelia gives me a training plan, and a list of
things to fix. I have to think about where I’m putting my feet when I run, and
what I’m doing with my shoulders and my head. I have to start doing some speed
work, and I have to start fixing my poor mushy core. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">In essence, I have to pull myself together.
Literally.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The next time I go out for a run, I list Amelia’s
instructions in my head. My head must go back and my shoulders go up. No – my
head goes up and knees go back. No – my feet go down and my head goes out. No -
... I am exhausted before I get to the end of the street.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">It would be funny were it not so frustrating. As I hop
and shuffle and jerk down the avenue, muttering to myself and hoping no-one is
watching me, I remember a scene in an old film called The Paleface, starring
Bob Hope and Jane Russell. The action is set in the Wild West and Hope plays a
cowardly dentist - of all things – who goes by the name of “Painless” Peter
Potter and finds himself married to the delicious Russell. In a turn of events
too complicated to go into here, Hope – who can’t shoot a gun but can shoot off
his mouth – gets set up for a confrontation with the baddy who has just run
into town. In a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oh3Hl0WKak">scene</a> that makes my mum and me howl every time we watch it, he is approached by a number of
grizzled saloon regulars who whisper lines of advice to him – “He draws from the left,
so lean to the right”, “There’s a wind from the east, so aim to the west”, “He
crouches when he shoots, so stand on your toes”. By the end,
cross-eyed with the effort of maintaining his bravado and remembering his
instructions, Hope is shuffling and sloping along the now-deserted main street,
muttering “He draws on his toes, to lean towards the wind..<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a wind from the east, better
lean to the right.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I am laughing out loud now as I run. I hold my head
up very straight. It feels very odd. I can’t see my feet. I realise that I have
got used to watching my feet. I have got used to a process of running that is
only about putting one foot in front of another. When I run with my head up,
not watching my feet, I realise how long it is since I looked at the horizon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I think about the reasons I run. I think about the
reason I last ran the London Marathon. I think about how painful my life was
and how painful Grace’s life was and how painful the training was, and the pain
of the Marathon itself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Then I think about why I’m running the London
Marathon again. Life is better. Mostly, the pain has gone. So maybe I should
start running like life is good again. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">As I think these things, my shoulders go back and
my back straightens and I am suddenly properly running. At last.</span></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-79376011416863142102013-11-06T13:42:00.000+00:002013-11-06T22:16:54.862+00:00On being ambitiousOh, the perils of being ambitious.<br />
<br />
The pain of being possessed of that drive to exceed that can so often place you in awkward circumstances. The aggravation of not being able to shut down that voice in your head that keeps telling you: "Go on. Do more."<br />
<br />
It's particularly vexing if you're an ambitious Brit, and that urge results in you Putting Yourself Out There (shudder) - exposed to the comment and analysis of others.<br />
<br />
Being aware of all this, I often wonder why I persist. Right now, I'm wondering it again because again, I find myself running uphill in the rain.<br />
<br />
Ah, running in the rain. Uphill. In November. My face is numb with cold and my fingers are burning. My hair is in rats' tails. And my bum hurts.<br />
<br />
I am doing this because my ambition has got the better of me. I am doing this despite the fact that my last run was so awful I haven't blogged - or run - for a month. My last run was the Royal Parks half-marathon in October, which I flailed around in such an ungainly manner, leaking both tears and sweat, and finishing a full two minutes slower than my previous slowest time, that I couldn't bring myself to revisit it in writing. I spent the following weeks Not Running, nursing my wounded pride and consulting various running clinics, nutrition and training experts on why it was that I seemed so unable to run fast. Or at least, faster. My ambition was such that even while feeling like a prize chump - both the Laurel AND Hardy of my running community - I was looking for an expert to tell me that it was entirely possible for me to run an ultra, or a triathlon. Which is what most of my online running friends seem to be doing these days. (Seriously. Could you all just knock it off?) One trainer told me, sympathetically: "We're not all built to be marathon runners, you know." I didn't call him back.<br />
<br />
Anyway, while I was feeling sorry for myself, my daughter was getting on with it. Gracie is showing her new school and her new teachers what she's made of. And she's made of good stuff. We've had some hiccups, sure. There's been some fine-tuning of the support she gets. But the school and she are doing well. I am glad to be ambitious about her. I am glad to be ambitious about her future. I am happy that I can be. It still bothers me, though, that it took us so long to get here, and it bothers me that it took so much yelling and screaming to get people to listen and act. I find I am too ambitious to be happy with our lot now. I am too ambitious to shuffle back to my box with what I got.<br />
<br />
So in sum: I'm out here running in the rain because I am ambitious for my daughter, I am ambitious for other children with autism, and I'm ambitious to do more to help. I'm out here running in the rain because next April 13, 2014, I will be running with team Ambitious about Autism - the national charity that seeks to help children with autism thrive. I will be running all 26.2 miles of the London Marathon. Again.<br />
<br />
At the thought of what I've signed myself up for, my stomach gives a lurch. At the same time, I splash through a puddle much deeper than I expected it to be and my feet turn instantly wet. I try not to think about the mud between my toes, and I keep going. I am feeling a bit sick about the training ahead of me, and I'm feeling a bit sick about the race next year, and I'm feeling a bit sick about asking people to help me raise money, yet again.<br />
<br />
But then I think again to last night's parents evening at Grace's school, to her form teacher leaning forward with a big smile to tell us that that Grace is making "fantastic progress", that every one of her teachers has commented on the quality of her participation and contribution. I think again of Grace's happy smile. We have a happy ending. Or at least, a happy continuation.<br />
<br />
I want this for other kids too. So I'm sorry to everyone I swore I'd never ask again for money but - hey - never say never again, right? Please will you be ambitious with me? If you can get me to the first £1000, my employer and I can match it. (To family and local friends - I'll be holding a big party early next year and selling tickets. Please come!) I don't want to be happy with what Grace and I have got. I want it for other children with autism too.<br />
<br />
When I got home, I found I'd done my usual circuit 2 minutes faster than usual. And then I found this notification card on the doormat, with Grace's name on it:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju5o8WgzmWgRBus7anUXhOEE-0PHqgz4srsMyinWtenflgfXU2s13S2t3-7pSXXX2ikC-1JBq-hTVQZrC4t_J8otql79oL4GLOOzhWrmoUE48bAox7Qd8iIV7Zoa6Hw0aO161Juf5k6LTc/s1600/award.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju5o8WgzmWgRBus7anUXhOEE-0PHqgz4srsMyinWtenflgfXU2s13S2t3-7pSXXX2ikC-1JBq-hTVQZrC4t_J8otql79oL4GLOOzhWrmoUE48bAox7Qd8iIV7Zoa6Hw0aO161Juf5k6LTc/s320/award.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<i style="font-weight: bold;">Be ambitious about autism with me if you can. <a href="http://www.ambitiousaboutautism.org.uk/page/who_we_are/index.cfm">Ambitious about Autism</a>'s stated aim is to make the ordinary possible for children and young people with autism and its mission is to help them to learn, thrive and achieve. Help us</i><b><i> by sharing this post on Facebook or Twitter and by clicking <a href="http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/SophieWalker">here </a></i></b><br />
<br />Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-29930337713696447742013-09-16T13:12:00.000+01:002013-09-16T13:12:01.926+01:00Naked runningIt's Saturday morning and time for my long run: the part of my training that still gives me butterflies and can cause me to wake up early with nerves.<br />
<br />
The Royal Parks half-marathon is three weeks away, so this morning I am planning to run ten miles. It's not quite where I wanted to be at this point - a hiccup (read: prolonged summer holiday laziness) near the start of my training plan means that rather than peaking now with my longest runs, and having the time to taper off with a restful short run before the race, I will be instead be working hard to steadily add the miles, and hopefully the stamina, right up to October 6.<br />
<br />
It's been a tense couple of weeks. I have not been calm in preparation for this race this year, not at all. My nutritional input has contained far more alcohol than is wise, and my sleep bank is sorely depleted. I'm still mainlining quinoa in the hope that it will counter some of the stupid decisions I have made lately about what I've put in my body (and also if I'm honest in the hope that one morning I will wake up looking like Gwyneth Paltrow) but I have no illusions about the damage I've done to my energy stores. So this morning, as I'm getting dressed in my running gear, I'm feeling nervous and a bit guilty about how my legs will cope with the miles I'm about to ask of them. Also: it's raining. Really properly raining. I'm about to go out with a hangover (don't try this at home) and bags under my eyes so big that Ryanair would charge me double, and to cap it all it's raining.<br />
<br />
I automatically reach for my ipod. Lately I have been relying heavily on loud music to distract me from the pain of running longish distances feeling underprepared. I admit it: too much of my training this time around has felt like a chore. But this morning my entire songlist looks inadequate: cheesy, repetitive, dull. On a good day I'm happy to admit this about my running music tastes - who needs thoughtfulness when you can have a stupidly happy bass line that will pound under your feet as well as in your ears? This morning however it's clear that there's nothing here that will help me.<br />
<br />
Taking a deep breath I make a bold decision. This morning I'm going to run as God intended: naked of earphones, wire and MP3. I am going to run Without Music.<br />
<br />
Quickly I grab my water bottle and watch and step outside and shut the front door before I can change my mind. Immediately the coldness of the air on my bare legs makes me whimper. I zip up my anorak and tell myself to get on with it. My watch gives the soft bleep that tells me my pace is now being tallied and judged. A gust of wind raises a line of goose bumps across my shin. Ugh ugh ugh. I take a deep breath and<br />
<br />
I am running. For a while I can't hear anything despite the lack of headphones. My fatigue is making me numb to my surroundings. Gradually a sound emerges: the patter of rain on my back. Then the whisper of the material of my hood moving against my ears as I run. It quickly becomes annoying and I push it back so my head is exposed. My face is wet in moments. Sod it, I think and I<br />
<br />
run a bit faster. For the next ten minutes I deliberately empty my mind: the mental equivalent of hiding under the bed. After a while - arms still moving, legs still moving, silence all around (I have set off early in the morning to avoid more people seeing my humiliation) - I let myself emerge again. Strangely, nothing hurts. My legs feel steady, my back feels strong. Without the music pushing me forward I have found my own rhythm. Not just that, but I have found a rhythm that suits me better. I am holding myself straighter and breathing more easily when I don't have to force myself to keep up with someone else's timing.<br />
<br />
I smile and feel relieved, until I remember: what about the hill that's coming up in a mile or two? I think for a moment, and swerve down an avenue to my left, making up a new route on the go to try to maintain this happy equilibrium. I run on, and on and still I am feeling good. I cross the park, and right on cue a scrappy little terrier wearing a ridiculous raincoat comes at me and I have to do a little sideways quickstep to avoid kicking it (tempting though it is) and then falter for a moment when it comes back at my heels but then there is the owner, with the grace to look embarrassed (by the dog or by the coat, I can't tell) and I am running freely again and even the lurch in my rhythm doesn't seem to have done any damage<br />
<br />
and this is lovely - so lovely that in fact I am absent-mindedly wondering whether or not I could get away with more wine as part of my training programme though surely actually that would be physically impossible - when I realise that for the last three miles I have been running downhill and that that means in a little while I will be running three miles uphill and that those three miles will be miles 7, 8 and 9 - with no music. A blip of panic grips me briefly, but I take a deep breath and tell myself that everything will be fine and I look around me a bit more because also, I realise, when I'm not plugged in to mindless beats, I am paying far more attention in general.<br />
<br />
It is still raining, but the steady drops have changed to more of a mist - the kind of English rain that blessed so many complexions before the invention of fake tan - and it's deeply refreshing. I feel as though I am rehydrating through my skin as well as from my water bottle. The path is patterned with pretty yellow almond-shaped leaves from the trees that line misty, muddy fields on my left and birds sing and shuttle back and forth over my head and the earth smells clean and fresh and even the occasional shush of cars passing on wet roads sounds soothing. I feel happy and fit and calm and I remember why I love so very much to run. I run away from my problems, I run to solve them, and I run back to them with a new perspective. I run because I know that with the money I raise from this race I will help the National Autistic Society to help more people like Grace and me. I run because it reminds me how strong my body is. I run to remember who I am. Small wonder I've been finding it difficult with other people's voices in my head.<br />
<br />
Next Saturday it's 11 miles. I plan to do them au naturel, too. Brace yourselves ..<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>I will be running the Royal Parks Half-Marathon for the third time on October 6, in aid of the National Autistic Society. To support me, and the work that the NAS does to support people affected by autism, please click <a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=SophieWalker">here</a></i>Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-41234528488106178272013-09-03T20:08:00.001+01:002013-09-03T20:08:12.501+01:00Be PreparedWhen I was nine, I was briefly a member of the Brownies. You'll note I don't say I was a Brownie. That's because I don't feel that I was there long enough to do justice to the uniform. I managed twelve weeks in total - long enough to encompass the Hallowe'en party, the Christmas disco and the New Year pantomime trip. Then, with a long period looming that promised little but washing socks for the Housekeeper's badge, I left, adrenaline junkie that I am, to seek my kicks elsewhere.<br />
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Thirty-three years later, I am running, and it's going phenomenally badly, and for some reason the Brownie motto is going around and around my head: Be Prepared. I am not prepared at all. I am running a half-marathon in six weeks' time and I am not prepared for it. I am running to raise money for the National Autistic Society and to raise awareness of autism, because of the experiences of my daughter, who has Asperger's Syndrome, and my daughter is starting secondary school almost RIGHT NOW and I am not prepared for that either, at all.<br />
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I don't mean I'm not prepared. I mean I'm not <i>prepared. </i>I've bought her new uniform, and her new shoes, and her new schoolbag. I've bought her some stress balls, and an alarm clock that will wake her with light and natural noises to try to minimise the stress of getting up. I've talked through the transition with her countless times and I've emailed and spoken to the woman who will be coming to pick her up and travel in with her on the bus for the school's statemented kids. But I'm not prepared. My girl is going to a new school, with all the change and people and noise and bustle and smells and demands and schedules and people, people, faces, faces, talking talking talking that that involves for her, and I don't know how she will be and I don't know how to prepare for that. So I am running to get strong at least, but if the level of my running ability is any reflection on my current levels of core strength, then I am royally screwed on that front too.<br />
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I have run half a mile and already I am staggering and weaving. There is absolutely nothing in my legs. This is because I have overtrained and underslept, a killer combination. That week in France when I let myself go easy on the runs turned into another week in France when I only did one or two runs, which turned into another week in France (I know - jammy) in which I mainly ate and lay in the sun. And then that turned into a week at home in the sun, eking out the summer, in which I didn't really do much, and and and and suddenly I had seven weeks to get ready to run 13.1 miles and went mad with panic and now here I am and I've just looked at my watch and it's crawling and I'm crawling and I've still got another six miles to do.<br />
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Be Prepared. Be Prepared.<br />
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As I groan and stagger on I tell myself that the process of getting prepared is simple: I just have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. If I keep going then hopefully at some point I will find that I am prepared. This is endurance training, after all. They call it that because it hurts, and it teaches you to endure.<br />
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So I keep running and though every single minute of the bloody run is bloody torture I am absolutely determined to finish it - because if I don't finish it then I won't have anything to point to and say 'look, I did this, which means I can do .. <i>this</i>', without which I won't get through the week - and so I do finish it. Then I hobble home to tick off the next box on my training plan.<br />
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Over the next few days as I chip away at the preparations for my event, and for Grace's event - interval runs, ugh, and sewing her school badge on her blazer skewiff, ugh - I realise that it's not just about being prepared, it's about how you act when the moment arrives. You can prepare all you like, but how you act when the pressure is on is just as important, and Grace, my Grace, always shows grace under pressure, at least in the big picture when you look at what she is coping with every day - what's a few meltdowns between friends and relatives - and so, so can I.<br />
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I may not be prepared yet, not really, but I am another step towards being prepared by having remembered that keeping going is important too.<br />
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So this one's for everyone who is starting school this week - children and parents alike. You can do it. We'll be right alongside you.<br />
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Just keep going.<br />
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Just keep going.<br />
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<i>I am running the Royal Parks Half-Marathon on October 6 in aid of The National Autistic Society. I will be ready! Meanwhile if you would like to ease the pain of my preparations, please click <a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=SophieWalker">here</a></i><br />
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<i>For more information about me and Grace Under Pressure, please click <a href="http://authorsophiewalker.com/">here</a></i><br />
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<br />Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-3778179679568584022013-07-16T20:59:00.000+01:002013-07-17T22:56:48.712+01:00Can You Tell What It Is Yet?So Vodafone has become the latest global blue-chip to cotton on to the business advantage of having autistic employees.<br />
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The telecoms firm has been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23313763">recruiting people with autism</a> to its offices in Germany, hoping to harness their skills with numbers and patterns to the company's advantage.<br />
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They are not the first company to do this. German software firm SAP said in May it hoped to recruit hundreds of people with autism in order to capitalise on their "unique talent" for information technology, after an initial small-scale trial boosted productivity. A week later mortgage finance company Freddie Mac launched a second round of paid internships open only to autistic candidates.<br />
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Activists cheered. Neurological diversity was on the way, slowly, but as steadily as race and gender, <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/04/us-autism-recruitment-idUSBRE9530KA20130604">they said</a>.<br />
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However. If you look up the media coverage of this trend, if you were to google, for example 'autism' and 'recruitment' you would find a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2328377/German-software-giant-recruits-autism-sufferers-train-high-tech-IT-experts-think-differently.html">national newspaper</a> refer to SAP's initiative as a plan to recruit "autism sufferers" . The article is illustrated with a photograph of Dustin Hoffman playing - you guessed it - Rainman. (Ta da!)<br />
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That article is the perfect summary of where we are in terms of society's perception of autism. Right there, that's it in a nutshell. We are in a Very Strange Place. I don't believe that SAP believes it is hiring "sufferers", but rather highly efficient people who are uniquely gifted with the kind of skills and insight that SAP thinks will make it a lot of money. I don't believe either that the autistic people whom SAP is hiring view themselves as sufferers. (I do however class as sufferers those of us who have to read that particular newspaper in the interest of research.) The story is skewed because of a failure to see past the big scarlet 'A' of Autism and the view that Autism Is A Bad Thing.<br />
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Proof of how entrenched this view is: While Vodafone was probably putting the finishing touches to its recruitment plan, buses in Seattle were driving around bearing <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/12/seattle-childrens-hospital-autism-ad_n_3582030.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003">this ad</a>, showing a little boy's smiling face alongside the legend "Let's wipe out cancer, diabetes and autism in his lifetime." The children's hospital responsible - a children's hospital! - was forced to apologise and withdraw the ad. There then followed much debate about why listing autism alongside cancer might be wrong. Lots of people, including me, were cross that this was even a debate. Lots of other people, including <a href="https://twitter.com/DoctorChristian">TV doctor Christian Jessen</a>, suggested we were overreacting. A friend of mine thought that parents who protested were doing so because they were too involved in the minutiae of their stressful, autism-centric lives to see that actually the ad was a great exercise in raising awareness.<br />
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Raising awareness. This is the way people who are learning to care often now speak about Worthy Causes and Difficult Topics. I use the term too. But it's not enough, any more, to use it without thinking about what you want people to be aware of. Many people think they know what autism is when they are not fully aware of what autism really is. In my view it is not something that should be included in a list of severe illnesses that can result in death. I would prefer we see autism as something to accept, and celebrate in many cases, rather than something that is better obliterated so we can all be normal, whatever that is.<br />
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I know this is relatively easy for me to say because my daughter has a high-functioning form of autism that comes with gifts such as artistic skill and theatrical flair. It is harder to think this way if your child is having a very tough life. It is hard to think this way if your child has very low functioning autism and will live all their life with the mental ability of a very young child. I cannot and would not presume to speak for those parents. But as an autistic friend of mine, who has had cancer, put it: "For many of us with autism it's like putting on a bus: "Let's wipe out cancer, diabetes and women" on the basis that women have period pain and mood swings and therefore their quality of life must be terrible and we should spend billions trying to find a way to turn them into the much more efficiently designed and emotionally stable men. We are not broken things to be fixed." This friend, by the way, has run a business for 13 years with turnover of £14 million and, during all that time, an error rate of 82 pence.<br />
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So far, so very weird. How do we explain the dichotomy between companies hiring autistic people for profit and the rest of society fearing and condemning them? <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2359570/My-demon-daughter-Many-mothers-boys-long-little-girl-careful-wish-says-besotted-battle-weary-mother.html">This piece</a> written by a mother at the end of her tether with her "demon daughter" set off a lot of alarm bells for me when I read it. A child who refuses to go to bed, get dressed, have her hair brushed, or essentially do anything she doesn't want to? Is that saying anything to you? To the people who left comments beneath the article it said that she was naughty and deserved to have all her toys taken away, straight away.<br />
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This baffles me. How can it be that while SAP and Vodafone and Freddie Mac are minting money from employees on the autism spectrum, and while award-winning novels and plays and films about autism surround us, we can simultaneously be in this other place too? How is it that there can be the <a href="http://www.ambitiousaboutautism.org.uk/treehouse_school/index.cfm">Treehouse School</a>, with its extraordinary care and calm understanding just a short journey from the educational establishment where for years my daughter and I battled to be helped? (I visited Treehouse today, and was moved to tears at one point by the impact of seeing such a professional and sensitive approach to supporting autistic children.) My daughter has been called naughty. We have been told in the past that bullying was something she brought on herself. But the people who used to think that have learned about her autism diagnosis. My daughter has learned how to temper some of her behaviour. I have learned - though it exasperates me to the point of screaming sometimes - that she just cannot go to sleep much before midnight, and needs her hair brushed with a special brush and won't wear clothes that don't feel nice on her skin. We have all learned a true awareness of Grace's autism. To watch her shine in the<a href="http://courage-is.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/high-school-musical.html"> school production </a>of Grease last week was all the more glorious for the whole class's joyful celebration of unconventionality and friendship.<br />
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It feels as though we are all watching a film in which the camera is panning back very slowly from something we cannot yet make out; as though we are guessing and guessing at the pixellated images as they shift and turn slowly into focus. Some of us have figured it out. Others are still screwing up their faces and tilting their head to the side as they try to size up this thing, whatever it is. Others have made up their mind, regardless of what the final image will show.<br />
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We have to continue until we figure it out. If we limit our understanding of autism, dismiss it, or give it an out of date label, we may all end up worse off. As Kate Ravilious said so well in her <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228372.000-mental-problems-gave-early-humans-an-edge.html">New Scientist article</a>:<br />
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"If the special talents in the population have helped humans to get this far, we may need such different modes of thinking to see us through the next few thousand years. If the past teaches us anything, it's that humanity thrives by being adaptable."<br />
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Or, as Barry Gibb put it equally well: "Conventionality belongs to yesterday."<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<i>Grace Under Pressure: Going the distance as an Asperger's Mum is published by Piatkus. Details <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grace-Under-Pressure-distance-Aspergers/dp/074995826X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373837935&sr=8-1&keywords=grace+under+pressure">here</a>. </i><i>It will be published in the United States by New World Library in September. Details <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/grace-under-pressure-sophie-walker/1114597046?ean=9781608682256">here</a></i></div>
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I<i> will be running the Royal Parks half-marathon in October to raise funds - and awareness! - for autism. If you liked this article, please click <a href="http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=SophieWalker">here</a> to sponsor me. </i></div>
Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1913588829228419204.post-11651891482562595402013-07-14T18:38:00.001+01:002013-07-15T15:25:14.626+01:00High School MusicalI am sitting on an uncomfortable little chair again.<br />
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The orange bucket seat is hard underneath me, its short plastic legs perilously splayed. The set-up has got no more comfortable since last year's school show, or the one before. Lines of parents in front of me shift uncomfortably in their Lilliputian pews. Betty, at my side, has already decided that she'd rather stand, and is hopping from foot to little foot, sandals clacking on the parquet floor, as she tries to launch herself above the audience blocking her view.<br />
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"Where's Grace?" she asks. "Where is she?"<br />
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I tell her that Grace is getting ready and will be along soon. Then I look down the row to Grace's dad, to her stepbrothers J and D and to her stepdad, all of whom look as though they too would be hopping from foot to foot to see her, if convention allowed. I smile, and they all smile back, and we sit a little longer listening to the blarts and burps of the band warming up, and the buzz of people arriving. It is hot, and the air conditioning is not quite keeping up. The stage is set with a canvas, bathed in a sultry red light, which bears the legend: Rydell High School. I have butterflies in my stomach.<br />
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Just as I am about to check my watch for the seventh time, two women stop beside my seat. One I know well, the other is a familiar face at the school gates for the last several years. They look down at me with the shiny excitement of people who are about to hand you the perfect present to unwrap. "Haven't you seen it yet? Haven't you seen her?" they ask. I smile and shake my head and tell them that Grace's aunties came the night before last. "She's amazing!" says one. "Amazing," concurs the other, grinning. "Such a voice!" They nudge me and then each other, mouthing O's of amazement and waggling their eyebrows in glee at me and I can feel that suddenly, I am beaming. "You wait, there'll be tears! You're going to have a little cry tonight, you are!" they promise me, and leave, chuckling and casting mischievous looks over their shoulders while bustling to their seats, for it's clear that the show is about to start.<br />
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My stomach is doing flips now: I feel as though I am perched at the top of a rollercoaster track, awaiting the swooping departure down.<br />
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Then suddenly, the band is playing that unmistakeable tune and everyone in the audience goes: ooh, and thrills a little bit, and the children are marching on and there is Grace and oh my god she's so beautiful and her eyes are bright and she's looking for me while she sings, searching the rows and she's found me and - though I wouldn't have thought it possible - she lights up a bit more and she sings straight to me, shoulder to shoulder with her classmates:<br />
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"We take the pressure and we throw away<br />
Conventionality belongs to yesterday<br />
There is a chance that we can make it so far<br />
We start believing now that we can be who we are - "<br />
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and I am lost already, rummaging in my handbag for a tissue. The audience is already clapping in time and whistling and the children all stand a bit straighter and grin out at us from under the lights. The song finishes and - before a word of dialogue is uttered - the place goes barmy. Whoops and cheers and whistles from the audience seem to push out the walls and the doors and the roof - surely the room can't contain such sonic pressure - and Betty puts her hands over her ears in sudden shock. I am whooping along with the rest, while wondering how I'm going to make it through to the end without being reduced to a puddle of salt water.<br />
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But the show has started properly now and the kids are talking, exchanging pretty lines and pert put-downs, strutting around the stage like they own it - because tonight, they really do. Danny is played by a tiny trim-lined lothario in black with a bouffant and liquid eyes - a dead ringer for Prince, circa 1982, minus the stack heels; Sandy in yellow cardie and skirt is played with sweet earnestness by a blue-eyed, blonde beauty. They are lovely. But I can't take my eyes off Grace for long. She is playing one of the Pink Ladies - Marty, with her boyfriends and gum and diamante sunglasses, big hair and vulnerable gobbiness - and she has it down pat. She lays on the wicked asides, rolling her eyes and pulling faces for the audience, and we love it. The minutes whizz by - I haven't had this much fun for ages - and suddenly it's time for her solo.<br />
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The dialogue dies away and Grace walks to the middle of the stage and her co-stars form an expectant circle around her. The band gives her a cue, and she opens her mouth and somehow Tina Turner has appeared from somewhere. Grace's voice is huge and absolutely on the money and the audience to a man sits back and goes: whoah. I am so proud I feel as though I could burst out of my clothes. And - bugger it - I am crying again, while beaming at her as she looks for my approval while she sings. When she finishes, the hall goes nuts again. As we file out for the interval several more mums come to me and tell me what a talent my daughter has, how great her singing is, and I gush back excitedly thank you, she does and it is and isn't your boy wonderful and your girl is just great and just like that old hurts pass and Grace and I are part of the community again.<br />
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Then the show goes on, and on. I can't feel my buttocks and I have cramp in my legs, but the torture of my seating barely matters. The Rizzo sisters come on - the role split into two here to showcase more talent. They are the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of tartness, the gorgeous girls playing them bubbling with wicked pleasure at some of the verbal slap-downs they get to deliver to their male classmates, who wince theatrically, and stagger about for laughs (which they get in bucket-loads.) The dance competition arrives, and the class bounces so high to the hand-jive that the audience laughs out loud and loves them all even more. Cha-Cha, stealing both Danny and the trophy, is played to delicious perfection by another beauty, with ebony hair and tight, effortless dance moves that make us all gasp.<br />
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As the children gather for the final number, my mind goes back over the past few years, over Grace's experiences at this school. I remember the hurts and the endless visits to the office, the nights in the kitchen going over the latest incident and the latest row and the latest fights in class. I remember the hours spent trying to summon up help, and cut our way through the thicket of bureaucracy put up to stop us finding the pot of gold we needed. I remember the weeks of feeling so lonely and so worried for my lonely, worried girl. I remember that in the end, help did come, and with it awareness and tolerance and friendship.<br />
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Grace is standing in the middle of the stage now, in a row of children, with her arms around the classmates to either side, and their arms around her. They are swaying, and singing:<br />
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"We go together like ramma lamma lamma ka dinga da dinga dong<br />
Chang chang changity chang shoo bop that's the way it should be, woooo yeah!"<br />
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- and in the middle of the silly lyrics it seems they all realise too that they've all come together, grown up together and made this wonderful thing together, and they hug each other and sing - <br />
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"We'll always be together<br />
We'll always be together.."<br />
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After the show, Grace asks if she can stay for the after-party please. I hug her and tell her of course she can. I tell her she was wonderful, and I love her so much - but she is already gone, running down the corridor. Her friends are waiting.<br />
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<i>Grace Under Pressure: Going the distance as an Asperger's Mum is published by Piatkus in the UK. Details <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grace-Under-Pressure-distance-Aspergers/dp/074995826X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373837935&sr=8-1&keywords=grace+under+pressure">here</a>. </i><br />
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<i>It will be published in the United States by New World Library in September. Details <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/grace-under-pressure-sophie-walker/1114597046?ean=9781608682256">here</a></i><br />
<br />Sophie Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07229564521493100885noreply@blogger.com4