Mistaking child abuse in disabled children

The case of Baby P is too awful for words. A case of deliberate, willful obliteration of an innocent life.

Before the case came up I had been thinking about whether there was an article waiting to be written about the issue of how parents of disabled children are wrongly accused of child abuse, apparently it does happen.

The reason I'd been pondering the issue was because my son Archie, who has Kniest Syndrome, had recently broken two fingers in a fall. A few days after the fall we realised that something wasn't quite right. A trip to the doctors lead to the diagnosis that it was very very unlikely that the finger was broken as he was using that hand, indeed it looked like he was.

But watching him closely after the visit to the doctors I realised he wasn't using those fingers at all and he would really scream in pain if ever he/we caught them accidently eg through picking him up, dressing etc.

At A&E the doctor was asking him about it and he was saying "sometimes they hurt when I catch them and sometimes when daddy does" - it was an innocent comment that could have been laid open to a different interpretation. It transpires that he had actually broken two fingers poor mite.

So far he's broken a leg and two fingers, [possibly in hindsight after the finger experience] a thumb too. I asked some fellow mothers of children with Kniest whether their children had also broken limbs and it wasn't unusual. The root of the problem is the inflexibility of the joints but it's quite scary going to the doctors/A&E with an increasing list of broken bones.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be caught in the net of mistaken child abuse of a disabled child, perhaps I should write that article and find out.

What do you do when your toddler is nearly as big as you?

Not a question the majority of people have to even consider.... But one I've been faced with this last week or so as we've just moved house and while putting things away it's been a balancing act trying to find places I can reach sharp/breakable/tearable/destructable object which means my toddler, who is well up to my chest height now, can't reach them!

It would help if he wasn't bright but [thankfully] he is and so even when I've found cupboards he can't quite reach the handle for or drawers he can't quite reach into he quickly works out that standing on one of the various steps scattered around will do the trick.

The bottom line is that he has to learn that some things are out of bounds and that is no bad thing, who wants a kid who thinks they can do what they like or have whatever they want all the time anyway?

Society's fascination with short people

I read about the publicity stunt to publicise the release of the "Guiness Book of Records 2009", due out today. They brought together the 'shortest man who can walk' - He Pingping who is precisely 2ft 5.37 inches, with 'the woman with the longest legs' - Svetlana Pankratova whose legs are more than 4 ft long.

It's the usual voyeurism draw but people are constantly fascinated by short people [and very tall ones too]. But when being short is just the norm, as it is for me, it's hard to understand the fascination?

I have to say I wouldn't mind meeting He Pingping because I'd actually be meeting an adult who's shorter than me, which I've only done about twice in my life so far!

http://news.yahoo.com/story//ap/20080916/ap_on_fe_st/eu_britain_world_records

The Paralympics!

There's no denying that the BBC coverage of the Paralympics is better than ever before.

Nightly programmes which have roughly the same format as the Olympic coverage, together with well known commentators and presenters [not to mention the added bonus of Tanni Grey-Thompson], makes the coverage slick and impressive.

Apart from the fact that someone couldn't be bothered to build a couple of ramps for the podiums, the only downer I find is the classification system for disabled competitors - is it just me or is it overly complicated?

This means my partner and I end up playing a "guess/spot the disability" game whilst watching.... It's a fine balance I'm sure, no one is expecting the commentator to come out with "look at that blindie", "wow he's only got half an arm" but a little bit of a clue would sometimes be quite useful, interesting. Perhaps the commentators don't want to make PC gaffs but they do get it right, it's just that for me they don't seem to say often enough what's "up" with people!

Have Kids Will Travel - article for Getting There magazine

Check out my article recently published in Getting There magazine about the issue of being a disabled parent using public transport with a child in tow, no mean feat but possible with the sort of planning that would do the military proud.

http://cid-7d03cd7cc3e2777f.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Getting%20There%20magazine/Have%20kids%20will%20travel%20for%20Getting%20There.pdf

There's a photo of Archie taken fairly recently, with a bus and a tube, at the start of the article and one of me and him in a tube station, taken ages ago now - looks like he's got something wrong with his eye but it's actually a bad 'anti red eye' fix....