Come and get your love

"Alexa, play 'Come and get your love' by Redbone."

It's maybe one of my favourite things to say.  It's one of the key tracks in The Guardians of the Galaxy movie.  Anything Marvel in our house is a big hit - Anthony's favourite movie of all time is Endgame, closely followed by Infinity War.

But it's not because it's a Marvel soundtrack that I love playing it.   Being on the movie that we've seen lots of times means it's familiar to my kids.  Being familiar and predictable is great for many kids with autism.  For our middle child, David, it can make the difference between functioning during the day and not.

Not everyone chooses to have children. Some people are desperate and have difficulty, some like me get them first time round and some others have no plans for kids and get them anyway. But not many will have sat down and thought, I know, what I've always wanted in my life and what would make it complete would be if we could have an autistic child.

Then, autism almost crept into our lives. We loved the boys and thought they were great people long before the words autistic, autism or the acronyms ASD or even ADHD were in frequent use in the home. When their diagnoses came, they helped us understand and support them, support us and in some ways admire them for what they do everyday to get to the end of it.

Often people see the challenges or meltdowns, which can be truly heart breaking.  They don't often get the chance to see how easy it is to love our kids.

One of those chances is when Alexa plays Redbone.

Whilst during most of the rest of the day, singing upsets David, it's allowed when Alexa is on... and we are dancing in the kitchen.

He puts down his iPad, he focuses on the whole family who are dancing with him and he watches as I sign words and dance too.  It's one of the few times you can hear him say words as he matches his sounds to the words of the music.

He'll copy the dance moves made by members of the family and he'll do it all with a huge smile on his face.

We can't dance all day - he needs more input.  But I'd say I do it several times a week, and it's always a joy. I love it mostly because I love him.

Raising my children wasn't exactly what I had expected but I'm delighted to come and get my love, whenever the mood takes us.

This post supports the #wetalkmakaton sign of the week - 'to love'.  We've been using Makaton for years to support Anthony and David's communication and are happy to include in our posts.  Why not learn the sign 'to love' today? It's a real easy one!