Walk Like An Egyptian.

An amazing thing happened today. It turned out to be one of the proudest moments of my life and it happened at a school assembly.

As soon readers will already know my partner Lily has a daughter called Sybil who is on the autistic spectrum. She attends the local primary school and very support from a care teaching assistant is doing really well. In the last four or five months she has really come on and is doing really good work at school. One of the big improvements that Sybs has made this year is that she now attends assemblies with the rest of her classmates. Until this year she found it very difficult as one thing she really doesn't like is the sound of children making a noise. Not easy for someone having to attend school every day. However she is finding it easier to tolerate noise and can now happily sit through whole assemblies joining in the singing (which she loves doing) with the rest of the children. Today though the day her class performed an assembly to their year and their parents. Lily asked me if I'd like to go and I jumped at the chance.

The assembly was all about the Ancient Egyptians and it was fantastic. I knew Sybs had a speaking part because Lily and I had helped her practice it quite a lot over the last few weeks. She had to thank everyone for coming at the very end of the performance and it meant that she had to walk to centre stage on her own and say "I hope you enjoyed our assembly, thank you for coming." What I hadn't expected though was when some of the girls in the class did a dance to 'Walk Like An and Sybil took part. She her dancing with her class mates and remembering all the moves was one of the most moving things I have ever seen. I hadn't expected my reaction at all. I love Sybs to bits but I hadn't really realised quite how much until her dance today. It was an amazing experience.

Afterwards loads of Mums and teachers came up to Lily to say how much they had loved seeing Sybil joining in and having such a good time. It was just as lovely to see Lily being so proud of her daughter.

Today was a very good day.