Help me find please - having a child with disabilities like unexpectedly going to Belgium

[TyneTeas]

Hi

I read a few years ago an article I remember being quite powerful about likening having a child with a disability about expecting your holiday being to one place but turning out to be Belgium and there is nothing wrong with Belgium but it is not what you expected or prepared for and having to adapt.

All my searches are just turning up how accessible Belgium may be for visitors.

Does anyone have a link please and thank you!

www.our-kids.org/Archives/Holland.html

Thank you!

I had remembered it as Belgium and Spain, so Netherlands and Italy were never going to fetch a result!

Please don’t send it to a parent whose child has disabilities...

I wasn't going to, but can I ask what the issue would be please? I know it was written quite a while ago and things change and that everyone's experience is different but it seems to have been written by a parent about their experience..?

I certainly don't want to use something as an example if it is no longer a good one...

Because it is so twee and ridiculous.

Please offer a couple of hours of childminding and make a cake instead.

(N.B I may have been with my son 24 hours a day since January with no respite and quite like cake)

Yep, it's not a favourite of mine either - I'm a sole carer for 2 disabled children. It winds me right up.

My child has an EHCP, so I am perhaps not the cake baking tourist I may have inadvertently come across as.

I quite like the article, I am sorry that you don't.

I knew you would be talking about that awful Holland shite.

Honestly apart from on MN I have never come across anyone in RL who finds it helpful and inspiring. It isn't and it just makes me sad and depressed.

It gives me the fucking rage. If you’ve booked to go to Italy and you end up in Holland, you get on the next fucking plane. Watching your child struggle and suffer cannot be reduced to a trite analogy.

It's utter patronising drivel. At least you get to go home after going to Holland. Disability lasts forever.

Most of the parents in the disability groups I’m in absolutely hate it. My son has autism and learning disabilities and attends complex needs school and I don’t mind it but I’ve seen it trotted out so many times I’m kind of sick of looking at it now. It’s the standard “hey your life is going to be fine” thing everyone sends you when you have a child with special needs.

Granted we are a) only going through assessment for ASD at the moment and b) if DC does get a dx then they’ll be high-functioning, so I fully appreciate our experience isn’t the same as those with much more severe disabilities - but I’ve saved this piece previously because I personally find it helpful. Yes, it’s a bit cheesy or twee but for the sentiment, and a better analogy would be emigrating rather than holiday, for me it basically hits the nail on the head about expressing the differences between my friends’ experiences and ours and how (of course!) I love the bones of my DC and they are themselves and I know their strengths and delight in their own delights, but that doesn’t mean that our current situation is what I wanted for them, and it does take practical and mental adjustments.

It comes up occasionally on an autism group I'm in. I find it twee and ridiculous but others seem to get something from it. Hey ho. Whatever gets you through.
I've been on holiday to Holland for real. It was pretty cool apart from the racist theme park rides.

Initially I found it a good analogy, but as time went on it really annoyed me - as if it was a consolation prize.

Also, I’ve just spent two weeks with my family in the Netherlands, with 2 dc with ASD and it really is a fab place to visit (also accommodating to disabilities).

You can find it easily - just Google 'welcome to Holland'. However as a parent of a child with complex needs I really dislike this poem. I remember it was on the wall at the hospital when my son was born in 2003 - it never, ever represented my feelings. I always felt it was for people who do not have experience of raising a child with complex needs.

always felt it was for people who do not have experience of raising a child with complex needs.

Yes this. It comes across as something trite that a person who is trying to be empathetic would say, but it just comes off as patronising rubbish.

Mum to severely disabled boy and another with autism! 'Welcome to Holland' gives me the rage!
It's ridiculously crap!
Yes offer to learn how to support the family and the child !!!!
That would be a winner for me ....you don't even have to do it.....the offer would still mean loads!

Personally I find it twee and silly but I do know people who find it helpful and inspirational (who also have DCs with serious disabilities, I mean).

I hate it too. “It’s not worse, it’s just different”

Bullshit. It’s fucking worse, by indescribable amounts. Watching all my friend’s kids learn to talk, bond with each other, care about their parents... it’s not just a different experience, like visiting a different country. I love my boys with my whole being and I would give absolutely anything to take away their autism, but apparently that makes me a terrible person.

Crikey that’s you told, OP!

The person who wrote it has a seriously disabled child, so I don't think it's coming from a place of ignorance. It's just not for everyone.

Yeah, it’s Holland and I’m another who can’t stand it. If someone had of given that to me I would have shoved it up their arse. Let’s face it if the airline fucks up and sends you to Holland rather than Italy, you would also get an apology, a refund and they would have you on the first flight back to Italy. Nothing remotely connected to having kids with SN.

Someone giving you this is really saying, it’s all okay because you get to experience SN, how great. Uhhmmm, yeah, no!

(It's Emily Kingsley by the way, if you want to look her up. Her son has Downs)

I won’t read it because I just know it’ll put me in a terrible mood.

I’d quite like to commission John Cooper Clarke to write something more suitable.