Who are you? Are you a Builder? A Mother? Are you a typical Capricorn? Are you a Runner?

Our lives are filled with perfect little boxes to classify ourselves. We all do it. When you meet someone what do you say? I know I will generally introduce myself as a mother and then my profession. It’s a nice, safe familiar way to fit in with others around us. We can understand who we are and how to relate to them. With these perfect little boxes we assume to know a little about this person or even ourselves. But are we just an accumulation of a series of boxes? Isn’t there more to us? And what happens if you don’t fit into these boxes that as a society we have accepted as the norm?

I have asked myself these questions repeatedly since our son was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome. Suddenly these comforting classifications I have lived with all my life are no longer reassuring. They posed questions as to where our son would fit in these world of boxes, and whether I actually wanted him to be in a box. Those whom I discussed our sons future with spoke of Disability & Special Needs and I rebelled against these boxes and refuse to let him be squashed into such a limiting box.

Within our day, our family discuss’ “Aspergers” and everything it entails openly, but only in order to understand how the experiences of our sons day may differ to those experienced by others. You could say it helps him to understand the little box many of us live in called “neuro typical”. BUT we don’t say that is who he is, because are you just a box?! I know I’m not.

And anyway, who would want to live in a little box when we can be so much more than a name, a diagnosis or a category!