To most people looking in, I assume we look like a regular family, whatever that may be. People who don’t know us very well probably think that I am a helicopter mum who fusses too much, that I’m anti-social or a bit aloof, and they probably think we don’t spend enough time away from our children. If only it were that simple!

This is not a pity post – I have just belly laughed with both of my fabulous ND children (who are no longer children) on the way home from the dentist, and for about 20 minutes afterwards. We are an incredibly happy family, we laugh together, we cry together and we are very, very together. My autistic teen has the driest, darkest sense of humour you could imagine, and he is so sarcastic – and our kids rib and tease each other all the time. They also have each other’s backs. They can throw insults at each other, but no one else can.

My reason for writing this post, however, is that however regular we may seem when looking in, and whatever people who don’t know us may think of our parenting, looking out can be very different to looking in.

4 years ago today, the rugby club went on a mini tour to Coventry. It was the team’s first tour, and parents and grandparents could go along too. Most of the kids and parents had an amazing time, and their Facebook feeds are full of happy memories and photos of the first day of the weekend away. Mine just shows a log on to Wasps’ Wifi. I wrote a post about it while we were away, which you can read here.

A lot has changed in my view of life over the last 4 years. At the time I was upset, but felt you couldn’t plan a whole weekend away for one person – but now I disagree with that thought completely. To be inclusive and not be ableist, you need to make sure that what you plan suits everyone, not just the majority. What happened on that weekend away impacted our son. He did go away the year after, but didn’t really enjoy it – he tried to have a neurotypical weekend away with the rugby team, but he isn’t NT, and it wasn’t the success we wanted it to be. He didn’t go away two years ago, and even if the tour hadn’t been cancelled last year, he didn’t want to go on that either.

Looking in we may seem like everything’s fine, but looking out, your world is very different to ours – even if your world is full of neurodiversity. I have written so many times about your normal being different to our normal, so I’m not going to write lots about it here, but we need to be how different we all are, even within NT or ND communities.

If I could turn back time, I would talk to the tour organiser and point out that for something to be inclusive, it has to be organised so that everyone is included, all the time. If you need to put in rest breaks or down time for some, then everyone can have that downtime – all teens are happy to have an hour on their phones! In the same way, if one person needs there to be disabled access, you make sure you all go to somewhere with that access. We need to include everyone, not just give options for people who might not want to do what we want to do.