A special needs Christmas

So by now the big man has been, chaos has ensued, the turkey is bubbling away in the curry pot, and we have enough bin bags to fill the wheelie bin twice (and they're not due to lift them till Saturday...) so that's Christmas done!

What was the hardest part of your Christmas?

Getting the turkey to fit in the oven, with pre leg removal still not solving the problem?

Convincing the kids that sprouts are magic turkey food and not elf poop?

Perhaps it was putting 1001 stickers on the kiddies new toys, to be told you've ruined it as its all backwards?

So we suffered all that in our home this year, but while you were circumnavigating the half erected pony mansions, the non operational (because the battery compartment requires a screwdriver that's in the shed) cars and light sabres looking for your phone / remote / game controller, we were frantically searching through them for splints, Lycra sleeves, and specialist pencil grips.

You can't leave the house until you know where these things are, and amidst the additional chaos of Christmas it's surprisingly easy to lose track of them...

But the extra stuff we have is not the biggest issue we face during Christmas, this year I have met two new foes. Skinny, drainpipe trousers are fast becoming my new nightmare! My nearly seven year old is very keen on her fashion, so I try my best to keep her things on trend. The issue we currently have is this skinny jean look. They are all well and good if she can wear her splint on the outside, tucking her jeans / trousers into the leg, but they have turn ups and thick patterned seams and all sorts of fashionable add ons down them... These rub, and don't sit comfortably against her AFO. So we try to slide them over the top, massive fail most of the time. Seamless skinny jeans would be ideal! But they are either dull or hard to find easily. Fashion is often ignorant of the many restrictions they create with some garments. My daughter always struggles with long sleeved tops due to her limited mobility in her right arm but I find it hard to buy her clothes that fit, look good, and don't create additional barriers to her independently dressing.

I'm aware that a top high street retailer are soon rolling out 'disability friendly' sleep wear, but what about the rest of it?

If only fashion could also be considerate... Well let's face it we shops that tailor for size 18+ only, sports shops, petite ranges, tall ranges... All for adults, what about kids? What about those of us that can't easily do up press studs or zips, or slip into skinny drainpipe jeans?

My second new nemesis is scooters! Scooter number two for Xmas, now this one is a doozy as it is a suitcase with a built in scooter, so that makes her carrying school bags and scooting much easier, yay! But they have non adjustable handles... What we need is a scooter that has one 'normal height' handle and one lower down so her shoulder doesn't get stiff. To do this is "customisation" and really expensive! But why can't they be designed to have adjustable features so you can do this easily? That way she can have a minion scooter without me having to scour the Internet for weeks looking for a plain one that meets her needs and then sticking minions onto it!

It sounds silly doesn't it that we can't buy stuff that is aimed at and sold to our kids? It's one of my biggest annoyances!

So what should we do about it? Short of managing our children's expectations and creating a demand for a change to large companies approaches there isn't really a lot we can do...

So like all parents, we grin and bare it...