Giving parents of autistic kids some room to breathe

Normally, hearing your seven-year-old daughter bluntly telling you to get off the trampoline might sound a little harsh. But for Kathleen and Derek King, it was music to their ears.

Sarah was first diagnosed with autism at two years of age, and according to Kathleen, in recent years, her vocabulary had almost disappeared. Then at the beginning of this year she began attending the Elbowroom, a yoga studio, which is offering a range of services for children with disabilities, merging yoga and occupational and speech and language therapy. It seems to be getting results. Kathleen certainly thinks so.

“She went from being a pretty quiet child, who doesn’t have much language, and now she is babbling, like when she was younger when she was a baby,” Kathleen says of Sarah’s newfound love of vocalising her world.