Isabella shares her son Christian's lockdown activities
"My son Christian managed to have his 20th birthday just before lockdown was announced. To put him into context in regards of Fragile X, his diagnosis came at the age of 5 – getting it and dealing with it has not been easy. However, the Fragile X society was there to help and life gets better, one day at the time.
In January 2020, Christian was in College doing a Life and Independent Living Skills course, together with his best friend Laura, and loved travelling to school by bus. In March 2020 school closed, the buses were out of bounds and he could not see Laura.
The only option seemed to spend endless hours on the iPad, watching children’s programmes. Christian did a lot of this. I am working from home and I am super busy, so I could not keep him company much. However, there is some silver lining in our Covid-19 cloud.
Christian’s teacher tried to send some homework for the pupils to do. It was too difficult for Christian, and he did not want to work with me. She also organised a couple of Googlemeets and it was nice for the students to see each other. It was not a lot in a 4 months, but it was something and it really made Christian happy.
Every Friday a local charity organised Zoom video calls for disabled young people in replacement of a regular ‘supper club’ organised by the same charity. Every week the participants had to share something about themselves (their favourite song, their favourite movie, a joke etc.) and it was something to look forward to every week. Christian is hardly verbal, however he managed to make himself understood when he had to share things with the group.
We cycled a lot…I am not saying this lightly as we live in Bath and, if you know Bath, you know it is very beautiful, but very hilly. Christian definitely kept in shape and we discovered beautiful scenery.
Christian honed his cooking skills, as he was the chef for lunch and the assistant chef for supper. "
Isabella adds, "All in all, we did not like lockdown. Christian’s education suffered and he did not have many opportunities to develop life skills. However, I am aware that it could have been much worse and I am grateful for our health and for the time we managed to spend together. "
Thank you, Isabella, for sharing yours and Christian's story of life in lockdown. If you have any stories you'd like to share, please get in touch.