I’m Karen Murphy, a 61year old mum of four and a grandmother of 13 beautiful children. I was born and raised in Queens Crescent, Kentish Town, London where I still live today. It’s a vibrant, diverse and close community. I was a Learning Mentor at St. Dominic’s Primary School for 25 years working with children aged 3-11 years with Social, Emotional and Behavioural difficulties and enjoyed every single second of it! It was the same school as my mum, myself, my children and my grandchildren attended. It was sooo rewarding and I still have grown men (and women) pulling up next to me randomly in the street to hug me and thank me for supporting them at school when they were going through a very difficult time. I felt blessed to be surrounded by such wonderful people and everything was going smoothly until my beautiful grandson Codey was born. All seemed normal at first but it was evident from about 18 months that things were a bit different with him. There was no eye contact, he wouldn’t respond to his name etc then we slowly realised that he was autistic which still came as a shock when diagnosed even though we knew it in our hearts. He is now 6 years old, non verbal, still in nappies, extremely hyperactive (obviously adhd but not officially yet) up most days from 3/4am and extremely hard to manage at times. BUT he is the absolute love of my life and the happiest, cheekiest most charismatic boy you’ll ever meet! There’s certainly not enough support for these children and their families that’s for certain but I just wanted to show everyone the lighter side of having an autistic child. I want kids to be more accepting and understand that there are some children out there who can’t wait their turn in the playground, who throw food around, who help themselves to your stuff, who flap and stim when they’re happy because they don’t understand the world the way we do! Love needs no words! :) ❤️Read more about this authorRead less about this author