Appointments are like buses, you don't have any and then they all come along at the same time! Monday was nephrology for our son, Tuesday was occupational therapy for our daughter, dentist for me and an Every Child Matters meeting, Wednesday was neurology for our daughter and genetics blood tests for John and I, today we saw the community paediatrician for our son and tomorrow we are seeing orthotics for our daughter! So far all the appointments have gone well; the only real concern is that we discussed the possibility of our son being on the Autistic spectrum with the community paediatrician. He gets very obsessive about certain things and finds it difficult to cope with a change of routine. We're not sure whether this is because of ASD yet or that this is his way of coping with his limited understanding of the world. Apparently, children with language disorders often develop highly routinised behaviour and try to dictate events themselves rather than 'go with the flow'. I guess its easier to understand what you want yourself than what other people want of you. We have to go back in 6 months and will discuss it further.

John and I went to a meeting on Tuesday which was designed to get parents involved in Children's Fund committees, a result of the Every Child Matters initiative. An interesting meeting as, despite the good intentions of all involved, there seemed to be a complete lack of integration of disabled matters into the whole structure. Until this point I did not fully appreciate the importance of the Every Disabled Child Matters initiative, but after this meeting, it was all to apparent why we need to push for disabled issues to be voiced and recognised more fully at the local and national level. Visit  http://www.edcm.org.uk and make a difference, every little helps and if we do not do anything, who will?