My shoulders are beginning to lower because I’m not watching Trudy every minute of the day, wondering whether I’d shut the bathroom door properly so she doesn’t get to the lotions and potions in there or if she really was going to stay in the garden.

I remember going to the World Down Syndrome congress in Glasgow, keen to know as much as I could about DS. I attended a workshop called ‘Wondering about wandering’. They talked about what seemed to be a collar and lead disguised as a backpack, and trackers disguised as cute necklaces or bracelets. My first response to this was that it was never going to happen to Trudy. She wasn’t going to be like that.

Little did I know!

The most recent response is: What happens when she decides to take the necklace come tracker off, and I think she is upstairs when she’s really headed down to grandma’s house, or she refuses to wear a harness when she’s 7.

But we are getting there. I’m not saying that she isn’t quite capable of leaving a building at any moment but, nine times out of ten, she makes the right decision. It is not worth it at all to leave the 1/10 moment to chance but this does give us hope that a reasonable life can be achieved and Trudy can and will understand that she will put herself in danger if she runs away.

I imagine that this, like many others, is down to a combined approach of us as parents teaching her and talking to her about what she should and shouldn’t do, to her seeing her brother and sister do the right thing and to school teaching the fundamental principles of safety.

So, I can feel my shoulders are lowering, less tension and stress about what she might be up to, fewer moments when we end up in hospital because she ate a conker or ingested olbas oil or sampled dog poo (this did happen!). She is growing and developing but at a slower rate, as we know she does, and leads and trackers will just slow down her desire to move forwards (see my post on ear defenders).

So, this is the path we have chosen for Trudy, more challenging and more tension for us but one that encourages resilience and demands patience in us all and, most importantly, independence and strength for Trudy.