As we prepare to go back to school this week, and into Year 12 for Thomas, I was reflecting on his journey, and thinking that back then I really couldn’t see how we could possibly make it to here…
From pre-school when he was first diagnosed and still couldn’t really talk too much… and then into grade 1… how could he possible do grade 1?? He can’t, how will he know what they expect from him, he is still smashing walls and spitting and kicking... he won’t understand what the teachers want him to do… no, no, no he can’t do it… the teachers reassured me he would be fine… and to their credit they found his ‘fine’ and much more… and then as the years went on… the realisation he was learning but in no way ‘keeping up’…
But he was nurtured and supported, and I learnt to let go of reaching everybody else’s milestones, and his age milestones, and running races we couldn’t compete in and realised he just had to march to the beat of his own drum (everything I teach), and that his wins were simply around making progress, let go of perfection, sit down your ego and trust that if today he writes a sentence we win, if next week he learns a new word and says it, we win…
And if next month he now knows what that word means, we won the jack pot…. and if he answers a question instead of repeating the question then OMG, that is a celebration… and when he writes a note in his diary, like he did a couple of years ago, asking himself persistently and ever so nicely to do his homework… then that is encouraging, beautiful, unique, cute and shows great self-leadership… an OP 1 in my world! 
So bring on year 12 and Thomas you go blaze your own trail like you know how to do.