The Rainbow Experience

The rainbow signifies the perfect balance between dark and light, clouds and sun, storm and calm. It is a mixture of pairs that create the whole—the unique expression of your being. We are all, in effect, rainbow children. I feel that each colour of the rainbow represents an emotion. Children born over the last twenty to thirty years are significantly different from those older, and many are not developing according to textbooks written decades ago. I often hear people asking why there is a rise in children with additional needs. If you believe we all have a soul, new souls are resisting human conditioning. We have evolved as a species, and it is a pure yet accurate analysis of what is happening on the planet right now. Children are desperate to communicate ways of learning different from what society expects. Somehow, we have got lost in a haze of expectations; for instance, we’ve been told what body images are standard, anything abnormal is something to be scared of, and if children cannot count to twenty by the time they are three, there must be something wrong. I am here to reassure you that no child on this planet is wrong, and it’s time to let go of these expectations and bring in different strategies to assist in learning from a unique perspective. The planet’s inhabitants were never going to be one-size-fits-all; we all have unique abilities, and they should be encouraged and celebrated. We need to relax as parents, and if our children don’t appear to be academic, this is okay. They’ll learn as much as they need to; being creative is just as valid. If they thrive on academics, brilliant—but allow them to discover their way of working. For those with additional needs, we need to stop telling them they are disordered and instead spend quality time getting to know them entirely, so they can learn comfortably and not how we want them to. I am here to give a little insight into my journey with my children’s educational needs, mainly their early years with a bit of teenage experience thrown in. I am not a professional, but that said, I am a professional mother who has seen and experienced the challenges faced by my children on a day-to-day basis. I receive a lot of support from Special Educational Needs (SEN) professionals and have a lot of respect for them; they work with families, giving support and encouragement and seeing the children through challenges that test the parent’s strength. I named this book The Rainbow Experience because family life itself is profoundly colourful, with its twist and turns and the spectrum of emotions we experience. I also realised that the autistic spectrum and the rainbow spectrum, as I perceive them, are the same thing. Health care professionals call it autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), and I call it colourful. If you are like me, at times you struggle to connect with your child, for whatever reason. Later in this chapter, there’s an activity to encourage you to think about getting creative with your child. It is designed to provide children the freedom to express their emotions without speaking about it. Children of any age don’t always express their true feelings for fear of adult response. I was one of those children, and now, at forty-one years of age, I am giving you this information based on my own experiences as a child as well as a parent. Expressing emotion was always difficult for me. I couldn’t get angry or frustrated in front of people, but crying was second nature. I would cry easily, and that has been my chosen emotional release. I’ll give some insight into my childhood, as I am giving you this information based on personal experience. The word “different” is quite fitting in my life, and from a young age, I felt different. My friends were always better, faster, or more popular than I. I was the quiet one with no voice, invisible, who tried to speak but wasn’t heard and certainly wasn’t listened to. I developed a fear of speaking in case I said the wrong thing. I felt ignored, so I didn’t even try. I think it was more to do with my perception. Lacking confidence in myself caused me to withdraw from situations where I had no confidence. That was when social phobia hit me. I hated being around peers at school. Children were so cruel. I said something; they mocked it. I took their words deep into my soul. I spent a lot of time in my room. Music was a gift to me, and I could relate to lyrics on a deep level. I listened to all sorts of different tracks, analysing the words and interpreting them. I have an ambition as part of my purpose working with children of a similar nature to use music as an outlet. Some children find it hard to express their emotions sincerely; I’ve been shown that creating pictures using the elements to mirror your emotions can be a helpful form of release. Doing this adopts the mindset that sometimes, we need to focus on how we are feeling and allow creativity to flow in the moment. I would like to think that these children can heal just by being around others who share the same story. I had a vision that I could bring those children out of their shadows into a space where they are accepted. I would like to think that my children can assist in this. My children and I have had some very rough times where we clashed; they bring out the worst in me sometimes, as I bring out the worst in them. They have unique qualities but aren’t always aware of what these are, out of a concern about what others think of them, so bringing them into my work and addressing our traumas together can profoundly impact others. I have learnt that we are all infinite souls having experiences on this planet, until our reality then shifts into the next existence. I hope to awaken young people and help them embrace their own unique experience now.