Eimear Coffey

And anybody that knows Ollie, he'd buy and sell you.

He's a great character.

It's amazing how expressive a non-verbal child can be and how they can communicate.

It's amazing.

He's taught me so much about life, like how expressive he is and how he lives in the moment and how he enjoys things on a day-to-day basis.

So Ollie really came into my life for a reason, as tough as that was at the time and the trauma of finding out this was the route we were going to go on, you know.

And anybody who has special needs children or disability children, there's a huge amount of grief with it as well, Brenda, because you're grieving.

You're grieving a life that you thought they were going to have, you know.

I remember one day going out for a walk and walking past the football pitch in Arklow, where I live now, and I saw a group of boys and they're all maybe under sixes or something.

And I was pushing Ollie in the buggy.

This was only a year or two ago.

And about the same age as Ollie and he's not walking yet either.

Now he's in a little walker and he's trying and tons of physio and therapies and all of that.

But I remember just bawling my eyes out, passing the football pitch going, oh my God.

Like six years on, it hit me, the grief.

You know, that's how grief works, isn't it?

It just comes in waves and the grief of, oh my God, he's never going to play football again.

you know so that that's and that still comes in waves I have to say as a mother but having said that he's a great little boy he's very content and happy like sleeps all night eats everything he comes off on holidays to Spain and great kid I really admire your honesty there Eimear because I was on extremely speaking to someone their child has been recently diagnosed with autism yeah and she said she felt robbed yeah

Yeah.

Absolutely.