about

Hi, I'm a parent. I have got two sons. My oldest son has cerebral palsy.

I've seen a lot of blogs from special needs parents on the internet but most of these, well all the ones I've read, give the mother's perspective. I've started this blog to give my perspective as a father. I'm not my son's primary carer, my wife is, and us dads often get forgotten. We have thoughts and feelings as well.

In this blog I intend to be frank and honest about my feelings.

One last thing, if you wish to comment on any of my posts please do so. If you don't have anything nice to say then don't bother.

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Photography Project

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A few months ago I decided I would like to try to put together a series of photos about life with a disabled son, the problems that arise and stuff like that. I'm not 100% clear on the brief myself but I thought it will become more apparent as time goes on. Eventually I was thinking I could display these in a gallery setting of some sort, I just need to develop the concept further until I'm happy with it. I'm only got nine photos so far and I'm not even sure I'll keep all of them but I thought I'd start sharing some of them here. This is the first photo I took. It's very dark and without context it's probably hard to see what's going on. This photo was taken at 3:07am. John wakes up most nights and it can be a struggle to settle him back down to sleep. One way I try to do this is just to climb onto his bed, sit him on my knee and cuddle him. Doing it this way I can attempt to stop him throwing his arms and legs round and he settles down agai
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The school photo scam

It's that time again. School photos. Great yeah? No. I've got a camera, I'm perfectly capable of taking a photo of my sons. I take lots of phots and keep the best. I've got loads of great photos of my sons. So why do I need to sit my son in front of a stranger with a camera for 10 seconds, hope he is willing to smile then pay twenty odd quid for a few photos that aren't even that good? At least these days we get a choice of photos, we can either have sinister or serious. Not smiling or happy or laughing. When none of them are great, I'm not paying out for them. I not going to spend money on photos I don't want just because it's his first school photo.
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The benefits journey pt2

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