Can you take me to walking lessons?
Amy Cameron
I’m mummy to 2 boys with very different needs - follow us to see how we live a different kind of normal.
Kids – they ask questions all day long: Mummy what’s for snack? Mummy what does space look like? Mummy what noise does a parrot make? Mummy how many people are in the world?
Their little minds are full of questions; they soak up information then spit out more questions.
Some of their questions are funny, some serious, some you can’t answer, some you don’t want to answer and then there are questions you wish they didn’t even have to ask.
It was a Saturday morning when the question came. We were watching cartoons just chilling out. These questions always seem to catch you off guard, you’re never ready with an answer that will fix it all, you don’t get a manual at diagnosis day on how to answer these questions but still these questions will be asked.
The question comes like a like a bullet:
“Mummy can you take me to walking lessons”?
The lump is in your throat instantly, tears have rushed up to your eyes with the impact of this question being asked, you’re trying to stop the tears spilling out and when you don’t answer immediately he adds “It’s just that I can’t walk like everyone else so maybe if I got walking lessons I would learn to do it”.
You look at your little three year old sitting in his chair escaping his normal by watching cartoons and you feel so much heartbreak and guilt.
You passed a faulty gene to him and he has spinal muscular atrophy. It’s your fault he has to ask this question in the first place and now you have no idea how to answer.
You know it is very unlikely that you will ever see him take first steps but there is a part of your heart that will never give up on the impossible.
It’s something that is always pushed to the back of your mind – you see others his age splashing in puddles, chasing each other, running in the park and you feel a tinge of pain and sadness that your child isn’t truly the same.
You answer as best you can – you tell him that he has a cool power chair that can take him where he wants to go, you tell him that walking legs aren’t the most important thing about a person, you tell him that he can still do everything his friends do just in a different way.
You try to reassure him. You try every day to give him the confidence to believe in himself for who he is and you try to make him feel secure in who he is.
You don’t know if that’s what he wanted to hear, you don’t know if you’ve made him feel better, you don’t know if he’s understood yet that he’s different.
You go back to watching cartoons with another little piece of your heart in pieces and you think to yourself if only it was as simple as taking walking lessons.