25/02/2026
These are Aoife's breakfast bowls. On the left is the Halloween Stitch bowl that her hoops must go in every morning. She has milk, served separately in a little jug, that she can pour over her cereal, or she can ask me to pour over her cereal. The spoon for eating the milk covered hoops must be a little silver spoon.
On the right is her bowl of emotional support cereal. The shapes go in the Spiderman bowl. These are not eaten with milk and must have the green and yellow spoon in them, but she will not eat them with the spoon. Often, she doesn't eat this bowl of cereal. But if it is not served in the way she needs it to be, alongside her hoops, she cannot eat her hoops either.
These are the accommodations we make for breakfast every single morning. These accommodations mean that she is able to regulate through the challenges of getting dressed, having hair done, brushing teeth, putting shoes on and leaving the house.
When she is an adult, if she is anything like me, she will follow another rigid routine to the same effect in order to leave the house every day. When she gets to work, like me, she might have another rigid routine to manage anxiety and regulation.
Maybe, like me, she will get to work early before anybody else arrives, put the kettle on as soon as she gets there, turn her laptop on, make a cup of herbal tea, check her calendar, respond to emails, prioritise her work for the day using her calendar as a prompt. Then she will eat her breakfast, go to the toilet, fill up her water bottle and go back to her desk.
Telling children that there are no accommodations for them in the "real world" is absurd. My accommodations are built into my work life and routines and have, for the most part (we won't mention some education establishments here 😉), been supported in order to ensure I am able to access my workplace and my role.
So, if you think a Spiderman bowl of emotional support cereal is too much for a Tuesday, just look at my colour-coded calendar and my pre-office tea ritual. We don't grow out of our needs; we just grow into better ways to manage them. Let’s stop pretending the "real world" doesn't have room for a little silver spoon. 🥄✨
