Perhaps the children always stay with you throughout the service each week at your church or perhaps it's once a month for the family service or maybe the children are taken to their groups from the beginning or part way through the service and they are not with their parents/carers at all. Whatever way your church operates at some point in church life they may be expected to be with you during the service and knowing how to help those who naturally struggle with surrounding

I cannot emphasise enough the importance of good quality training in helping your volunteers to have understanding and empathy when looking after children with autism. The children's worker can have a massive impact on whether the child with autism will stay in the church setting. It can impact whether the family will stay at the church, how they feel welcomed or if they will leave and feel rejected. Whilst an overview of autism can help understanding, knowing how this can

The church is more than just the building, as I wrote previously about creating a culture of acceptance. This time, I want to focus on the building. Whilst it would be great to add on a calm down/sensory rooms, lighting, sound boards to create less echo etc I understand this is not possible. Some of our places of worship are centuries old, or meetings could happen in a rented space where there is no control over fixtures. I'm not suggesting physical changes but there are a

So church should be a welcoming place to all, Jesus made a point of being with those who did not fit into the social norms. He socialised with tax collectors! He saved the gentiles (non Jews) - He was not afraid of not following social protocols and He did not look down on others. This is the first part of a series of posts on how churches can help support families of children with autism/additional needs. First, we will be looking at Creating a Culture of Acceptance. It is

First and Then Card Visual As I have spoken about previously here, we also used a First and Then card. This was a visual to help our children cope with a task they found particularly hard or we would use to try and get the next task done quickly/avoid meltdown. Once they completed the First, they could have the Then (the motivator). The Then side could change as many times as necessary but the First card could not, until it was achieved. This is how we used visuals and ro

How to stay sane whilst parenting children with autism! Routines and visuals, how they helped to keep a calmer household and trained my children on what was expected. Personally, I hate having to do the same thing over and over again - I find it soul destroying and as feel as though I am being controlled. I prefer to have a set of tasks I can complete throughout the day in any order and add in spontaneity. However, this does not work for my children - at all, not one bit.

I just wanted to take my child and leave school, like every other parent was doing in the school playground. Surely that's not too much to ask or desire? However, my child's day did not go to plan so now he was refusing to leave, verbally broadcasting his anger and upset to everyone. The pressure was on - teachers, parents, his peers and other children were looking on - how was I going to handle this? I could feel the judgements and stares 'He's far too old to be behaving li

Living with autistic children makes you look at the world differently and whilst some things are difficult to navigate, others brighten my day! Here's some of my top 5 happy autism moments with my children... 1. Literal Mum 'Please can you put this towel in the downstairs toilet?' Child 'okay' He takes towel and goes downstairs Expectation: towel to be somewhere in the bathroom, ideally hanging on towel rail Reality: Towel down the toilet, exactly as requested 2. A different

Being a mother of children with autism sometimes means I am operating on very little energy, strength, sleep and grace. I know people generally mean well and want to help or empathise but sometimes in the back of my mind, I'm thinking - did you really say that aloud? Yes I'm a christian and I do try to be graceful to others but please think about the comments you make, even those said with the greatest of intention can hurt. So I've put together a list of comments I've expe

Perhaps you would think that after already having a son with Autism that diagnosis the second time round would be straight forward - or that surely after all we've been through it wouldn't happened again... Maybe after having experience of fighting for a specialist school place, that 2nd time round would be a doddle... It was not.. There had been a question mark over our second child - was he merely copying his autistic brothers behaviours? was this the affect of living with

So our son is in a specialist autism school sponsored by the National Autistic Society, how did we do it? how long did it take? Did we have to go to court? Read below to discover our journey in finding the right autism school for our son. A school that could handle his high academic ability along with his social difficulties and provide the therapies he needed. When we moved back, we had a school in mind that seemed a perfect fit for our son. It appeared to tick all the boxe

We relocated 5 years ago, from the renovation house. How did we know it was the right time to move? how did we know we weren't just running away? We made the decision to move almost 6 years ago now. The doors were closing all around us, life became really tough - Our eldest child was really struggling to cope with everyday life due to his Autism. The development gap widened in terms of social interaction. He attended a great mainstream school with a statement but he was no

Whilst in the background I have always wanted to be a stay at home mother and wife, there was another part of me that longed for something else. I am a product of the world and felt that it wasn't enough to just be that. I felt I needed to be more. In order to be accepted/right by the world I needed to contribute to society by earning money and having a career. That was the way to be someone... Looking after our home and children just didn't seem to be enough - as a new ca

When I became a mum for the first time, I felt lost. None of my present friends had children and they were going back to uni, promotions and moving away. I was so excited to become a mum but not having work to go to or family around, I experianced loneliness, as I had no one to share my day to day life with, whilst my husband was at work. I was depressed and going out became harder but God had a plan. He revealed himself to me - I became a christian and with that I entere