Luke

About Me

Hi there! We have recently moved to Folkestone and moved into a house on Frogholt (which is both a street and a vague area). We're looking to give stay-at-home mum EJ some time off, before getting to this site I assumed we would get a nanny but if we were able to share childcare with another family that would be amazing

We have three beautiful kids - Hazel (18 months), Charlie (3) and Florence (5). Florence has autism (like her parents :) - she has a relatively rare form of autism called 'autism with an expression of pathological demand avoidance'

This requires a particular type of approach to minimise her masking and keep her out of her threat system - it's called 'low demand parenting' but you could also interpret it as 'don't try to teach them anything, or get them to help you, and keep discipline to the bare minimum - just when safety is involved'. This is a long way away from the approaches we thought we'd be taking as parents (and indeed the way that we tried for the first 3-4 years of her life)

Florence is an incredibly kind, caring and funny child. She is a gestalt language processor, which means she doesn't learn words individually but in chunks as big as whole sentences, which she often copies (accent included) from TV. When she was younger she had a language and speech delay but she's very communicative now (as long as you're not asking her a question or to do something!). As long as she's slept, and things are going her way, she is a delight to be around. Currently she's sleeping and getting her own way so things are good, but that is changeable obviously

Low demand parenting also involves letting them have what they want (with surprisingly few boundaries), which includes TV - so any other family would have to be comfortable that there would be TV happening here

Charlie is a cheeky chappy who has a ready grin and adores his older sister - the jury is very much still out on his younger sister however. He's pretty good with her and can even be caring at times - but he's definitely testing out the 'I'm bigger than you' thing

Hazel is false advertising for children - she has been zero hassle whatsoever, she is very easy to love, goes down for her nap without a grumble, and is thrilled with any amount of attention

We're (trying to be) an outdoor family, who are ok to get them all in the wet weather gear and spending time out even when it's a bit grey and mizzly (though not when the rain is being serious about coming down)