Little Loves Wellbeing - Danielle Brown Kelly

14/11/2025

They're a credit to the town

14/11/2025

13/11/2025

13/11/2025

This looks amazing! 😍

13/11/2025

12/11/2025

❤️

What a lovely afternoon I had last week hosting Bill and Garv, along with their mum Danielle, to personally thank them for the amazing initiative they've taken to clean up Swindon!

These two young men took the lead themselves, registering their clean up event through the Surfers Against Sewage website. They completed the necessary forms, ordered the equipment, and then spent over two hours on a cold day carefully collecting litter in Coate Water. After the clean up, they meticulously sorted, tallied, and recycled everything they found!

They record what they find, contributing to Surfers Against Sewage's important brand audit, fantastic dedication!

We all sat around the table, and the boys were so thoughtful in their questions and comments. They have great ideas on how we can better care for our local wildlife and protect our precious green spaces. They even wrote to me afterwards, and I hope we can continue the dialogue.

I absolutely love meeting enthusiastic young people who care and love Swindon as much as I do. Bill and Garv represented their generation beautifully! Their next plan? To clean up along Shaftesbury Avenue, as they continue to do what they can to care for their community.

They are an inspiration to us all! Let's follow their example and look after our wonderful town.

11/11/2025

As Autistic people grow and develop, so do their differences, their needs, their struggles. Just like everyone else. As in - humans.

“You weren’t like that when you were younger”

“You used to love that as a kid”

Are all sentences people say when they still hold that bit of doubt that you are who you say you are: Autistic.

Here’s the thing, we can also often chalk things up to masking too, sometimes it’s easier to explain through what one would assume was the most simple explanation.

But, the truth is, just like other typical humans we are evolving every day, we are learning and developing and what would have once been our nemesis can actually 10 years later be something we can’t live without.

We are growing. Sometimes yes it’s masking. But not always.

Often, it is the also the product of problem solving. Sometimes for instance, we like the activity of say swimming, but we dislike the transitions before and after and therefore we will avoid the actual thing we like. Until, we find a work around, a problem solving work around that suits our individual needs so that we can do the thing we enjoy.

So on the outside, our needs appear conflicting.

“Well you can do it on holiday, but you can’t do it at home? “

I was an actual real life water baby when I was a kid. Loved swimming. In lakes, pools, rivers, the ocean, in the back garden in a plastic one foot deep paddling pool.

As I got older, and the task became much more laborious, ans my sensory differences evolved, I hated it. Until there wasn’t labour involved anymore. Such as on holiday.

The pool is right there. Outside my hotel room. I’m dressing in a swimsuit anyway to sunbathe, I have everything I need and I don’t need to change because the sun will dry me. It’s an all day activity that doesn’t involve much transition.

I still absolutely loathe being splashed though!

But, present me with a Sunday swim and I crawl up inside of myself and want to hide. I hate it. There is too much to think about!

Getting everyone ready, where is everything, I need to pack for five people. That’s five towels and swim stuff, that I will then need to wash and dry when I get home. I Don’t want to get my hair wet, because it takes ages to dry, the kids will splash me because I’ve told them I’m not getting my hair wet, and my hair gets wet, I’m frustrated. I then have to get out, and endure the sensory hell that is cold, dirty floors that make me want to squirm and I also take on the sensory overload of my children because they are feeling the EXACT SAME.

Add in the weather, if it’s raining, I don’t go out. We’re in England. It’s always raining.

Getting to the car, in the rain, then having to sit and drive while wet, and then drying on the way, getting out when there and getting wet all over again, and having to change just to get even more wet! It’s a head shaker.

But when I was a kid. I loved it. Even IN the rain.

So you see, I may have not been like this as a child. But I am an adult now. I have thirty years on me from that water baby kid and I’ve developed, I’ve evolved, my needs and differences and struggles are different.

That doesn’t mean that I am any less Autistic, because I enjoyed something once that I don’t enjoy now.

This can be applied for our children who have very conflicting profiles on an almost daily basis and particularly for PDA kids who are more like an hourly basis.

It doesn’t lessen us. But it’s a lesson for you!

Don’t insinuate that someone’s differences or struggles are not valid because they ONCE enjoyed something. It’s demeaning and ableist.

I’ve changed and evolved so much from when I was not a mother. I know that’s hard for some people to understand. I am so far removed from my 20 year old self that people don’t recognise me.

This is my experience. I don’t speak for everyone.

I also didn’t have eye bags as a kid, but that doesn’t make me any less of an adult! 💛

11/11/2025

❤️

Veterans Day is November 11th.

It’s important to teach little ones about Veterans Day so they can understand the value of bravery, service, and gratitude.

Here are some simple ways to help them learn.