Some milestones just come. Others we fight for.

Tomorrow, Bláthnaid graduates from Montessori.

I know. It sounds slightly ridiculous even writing the word graduates about a child who still carries a random scrap of paper around in her pocket for three weeks because she has decided it is important and therefore everybody else must accept that it is important too. There will be songs and little certificates and photographs and parents trying not to cry while simultaneously taking 400 pictures of children standing in a line singing Golden from KPop Demon Hunters. I cannot wait to hear the live delivery of the “gradulation” song we have been practicing for a month now. I will be all over it.

Lookit. It’s not that I think a preschool graduation is some enormous life event in the grand scheme of things. It isn’t. But it is a lovely little ritual marking the end of a chapter in a place that kept one of the two most precious things in my life safe, happy and loved for years. I handed that team my tiny daughter and trusted them completely, and they rewarded that trust every single day. She bounded in there each morning, made friends, learned, played, felt secure and had the kind of carefree early childhood experience every parent hopes for.

Tomorrow is really a celebration of that.

And you know what? It will be a lovely afternoon. Because these little rituals matter more than we sometimes admit.

They matter because they mark progress. They create memories. They allow parents to stop for a moment and say, “Look at you. Look how far you’ve come.” If I am being completely honest, they also allow us to feel, however briefly, like we might actually be doing okay at this parenting thing.

Man, I need that reassurance.

Most of parenting, for me at least, feels like uncertainty. I spend a lot of my time wondering if I am getting anything right. I worry. I second guess. I replay conversations and decisions and choices. I have had to learn how to parent two very different children in two very different ways, while trying my best to be fair to both. Same, but different.

Every now and again, society hands parents a little “typical” milestone. A sports day. A nativity. A concert. A graduation. A photograph with a certificate. Something tangible that says, “Look. Your child is growing. They are finding their place in the world.” I see this all the time as a teacher. I adore watching families experience the happiness, pride and joy of their children. I love seeing grandparents beam and parents fill up with tears over things that might seem very small to everyone else. Oh God, I love that. Because they aren’t really celebrating the certificate or the concert or the graduation. They are celebrating the child. The child they dreamed about. The child they got to know. The child who is becoming exactly who they are meant to be.

I’ve seen it with my lovely niece and nephew and how much joy it brings to my wider family. I’ve seen it hundreds of times in schools. And I am incredibly grateful that Gav and I get this moment with Bláthnaid. However, if I am honest, that gratitude comes wrapped up in something else too.

There is just over two years between our Bláthnaid and Doireann, but they are growing up in two entirely different worlds. The milestones that arrive naturally and automatically for one child can become a reminder of the milestones that never arrived for the other. As we get ready for tomorrow, I find myself thinking about D.

D never had a Montessori graduation. There were no little songs. No certificates. No gathering of families marking the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. When she finished in her early intervention setting, a celebration like that wasn’t even suggested. To be fair, we were so clouded by worry and concern at the time that we didn’t question it. We were focused on bigger things.

We don’t really do birthday parties. We don’t do the smiling first-day-of-school photographs. We don’t do many of the things that seem to define childhood for so many families. So it was never discussed. We never expected it. And truthfully, we were so relieved to be moving on that we simply looked ahead to her current setting, which has been as safe and supportive as we could ever have hoped for. I may write more about that period someday when I feel able to properly process it all. Stuff went on that just was not right and we didn't make right decisions at the time. But, as ever, we were just doing our best with what we knew at the time.

But tonight I find myself sad for the little girl who never got her day in the sun.

Not because she didn’t deserve it.

Not because she wasn’t achieving extraordinary things in her own way.

But because it is a brutal reminder that the structures which create these moments simply weren’t available to her.

The reality of parenting a disabled child is that you spend an extraordinary amount of time fighting for things that other families assume will simply happen. School places. Assessments. Therapies. Supports. Transport. Services.

You become so consumed with securing the basics that celebration often falls down the priority list.

And if I am being really honest, I don’t think we have ever quite felt that our family fitted naturally into those big public celebrations anyway. The things D needs to feel safe and regulated can look different to what people expect. The accommodations we make every day to ensure she is happy are completely normal to us, but can sometimes make other people uncomfortable.

So over time, without consciously deciding it, you stop putting yourselves forward for things. You stop imagining the big parties and celebrations. You quietly lower your expectations of what family milestones might look like.

I don’t think that’s particularly healthy. It’s probably a survival mechanism. And that is what I find myself thinking about tonight.

Not just the Montessori graduation she didn’t have, but all the future milestones that may never simply materialise unless people continue fighting for them. Because these moments do not emerge from nowhere. They are built on opportunity. They are built on inclusion. They are built on systems that assume a child belongs and that their participation matters.

For many disabled children and autistic children, those assumptions are still not there.

I know Doireann’s life will not look like Bláthnaid’s life. I know success cannot and should not be measured against neurotypical milestones. I know that many of D’s achievements are every bit as remarkable as any graduation certificate, even if the world doesn’t always stop to acknowledge them.

My God, that child is doing her best.

But I also know this.

Every child deserves opportunities to be celebrated. Every child deserves moments where the people who love them get to stand in a room and say, “Look at what you’ve done.” Every child deserves chapters and transitions and ceremonies and memories. And too often, families like ours have to fight for every single one.

So tomorrow I will clap loudly for my Bláthnaid. My sparky, brilliant little B. I will take far too many photographs. I will cry at songs sung by four and five-year-olds. I will marvel at how quickly she has grown and how lucky we have been to watch it happen. I will dream about the happy days she has ahead of her in school.

I will feel incredibly lucky.

And I will also feel sad.

I suspect that is the reality for many parents of disabled children. Joy and grief are not opposites. More often than not, they arrive together and sit side by side. Tomorrow is a celebration of one little girl reaching a milestone. But it is also a reminder of why I keep advocating.

I want D to have milestones too. I want her life to be marked not only by appointments, waiting lists and battles for support, but by celebrations. I want there to be joy. There is joy. So much joy. I just want more opportunities for other people to see it too. I want there to be moments where she stands in the spotlight and the people who love her get to applaud. And until those opportunities exist as a matter of course, rather than because somebody fought tooth and nail for them, I suppose I will keep fighting.

Tomorrow belongs to my Bláthnaid.

But part of my heart, as always, will be thinking about her seven shades of determination-fuelled big sister, my gloriously, unapologetically Doireann.