Family fun in the safety of a special school.

It is not often that I can take the kids to the markets or carnivals or any function that involves a lot of people and a lot of noise, especially by myself. It’s just not possible. To much noise plus to much light plus to many people ends in meltdowns. So when my sister asked if we would like to come to her children’s school fun day I jumped at the chance.

Reason number one is that her children go to a special school, this meant that the fun day would be in a completely safe environment, fully fenced and nothing dangerous left laying about.

Secondly, the event was run by the schools educators and attended only by other children with special needs. The idea of being able to take my children somewhere and not have to worry about people’s reactions or disapproval of their behaviour is like heaven. Plus, if anyone did have a meltdown their were trained staff available to assist.

So on Sunday morning we packed up the car and headed for Brisbane. Although it is not that long a drive, by the time we reached my sisters house the kids were very happy to be out of the car. We let them stretch their legs for a bit and play with their cousins and then back in the car to head to the school.

We decided to go around half way through the fun day as none of our children would have been able to door for the whole 3 hours and I’m glad that we did. Most of the other families had been and gone and it was very quiet.

The kids immediately ran, again, it’s not often that they get to run free and do any activity they want, I usually have to keep a pretty close watch on them even at our own school functions as the school is not fully fenced, but here they could do what ever they wanted. It was wonderful.

They all ran different directions, I had Miss 13 follow the baby, just in case. The boys went straight for the jumping castle, I unfortunately didn’t get photos as I had to follow Miss 3 who wanted food. Word soon spread that their was a sausage sizzle and they all came and had something to eat, then vanished again.

Miss 3 was the only one brave enough to allow someone to touch her and went and got her face painted, she decided to be a rainbow! I did try to get the others to have a go but they were not having it. So we moved on to the animals.

They had a lovely petting zoo and three little ponies for the kids to ride. Again only three of my kids were wanting to ride be ponies. Master 7, Master 5 and Miss 3. Not surprisingly, Master 10’was not going anywhere near them, the poor boy had a fall of a pony almost 7 years ago and has not been near one since.

He did however head into the petting zoo. He fell in love with a chicken. He carried it around the whole time, and even when they were packing up he didn’t want to part with it. I however was happy to leave the chicken and have a feeling that someone will be nagging for weeks to come that we need to get one.

Although there was a lot of screaming and a couple of tears from Miss 1 who didn’t like the animals to move, she was happy when they just sat their bit if they dared to take a step she would shriek. She didn’t want to come out though, just scream in terror and the move onto the next animal that was standing still.

Master 5 was also a little bit afraid of the animals, it didn’t stop him from petting them though. He would jump and run to the fence then head back in, it was adorable to watch and a huge milestone for him considering last time we went to a petting zoo he wouldn’t even go in. I was very proud.

Master 7 was more interested in the kittens than the farm animals. The family that operated the zoo had a cage full of kittens for adoption. As you can imagine the kids all wanted to take them home. Again the answer was no! Much to their disappointment.

They all wanted to stay longer but it was time to head home, again they surprised me and everyone left without to much trouble. I was all braced for meltdowns and crying but they behaved so well.

The biggest milestone of the day goes to Master 10 who four months ago was deleting photos of himself of my phone, today he was posing for them. He has come so far and I was thrilled to see him so happy.

We all piled back in the car for the drive home. They had played and had a beautiful afternoon. Although they got a bit antsy in the car all of them had a great day with absolutely no disasters. They all even managed to stay awake till we got home with made it so much easier for me to get them all in to bed, nothing worse than trying to carry an unconscious 7 and 5 year old out of the car, they weigh a ton.

As always thanks for reading.

@mumofmany.