The hardest thing, one of the hardest things I find is other people, you know that is the thing I am always bothered about. I know it is a problem more in my head and other people just say “I don’t care what other people think”, but you know from when he was little and he used to scream and head bang and people used to stare in shops. And going to school and in the playground and other parents that don’t know me, seeing me carry him or him crying and even now, you know when he goes out in his slippers he looks different and going into our local post office that we go into almost every day, and they say, “Hello.” And he doesn’t say hello back. I feel uncomfortable with that and apart from that the other hardest thing was the whole school thing; taking him, me dealing with the teachers. I would have counted that as the worst thing ever but it is history now and I have moved on.
But I think ongoing it is people’s attitudes and people’s assumptions and the way people look at you even now, when it is obviously a school day so why isn’t he in school? And I have not had anybody say it to me yet. I have had people say, “Oh aren’t you at school today?” in a nice way. And I have said, “Oh no, he is home educated.” But it is just everybody’s assumptions that, even other parents; “Oh but bring him along because he will love it” and I am like “he won’t, he will hate it”.
And just getting that message across is really, really hard because people just haven’t come across it or they have heard of it but they have got no idea about the implications on everyday life and as I say, we can’t do normal things. He won’t ever go to a birthday party or family gatherings. We have got a christening coming up in a couple of weeks. It is my brother’s son’s christening so it is immediate family but there is no way Callum could go you know, no way and even close family, I think, struggle with how difficult it is for Callum to do something like that. But it is. It is difficult and I have got to the stage where it is not worth making him do something like that. You know why would you make somebody do something that they really don’t want to do that would make them unhappy? So, other people’s attitudes.
