Normal Schmormal: My Occasionally Helpful Guide to Parenting Kids with Special Needs

Ashley Blaker's book 'Normal Schmormal' is a heartwarming and hilarious part-memoir, part-guide on parenting, adoption, and raising children with special needs. It highlights the many challenges and rewards of parenting children with additional needs, written with humor, compassion, and love.

Format: Hardback
Length: 384 pages
Publication date: 20 July 2023
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

The heartwarming and hilarious part-memoir, part-guide from comedian and father-of-six Ashley Blaker, on parenting, adoption, and raising children with special needs.

'We had such a variety of experts visiting our home, we really needed a revolving door. All these professionals would watch our son playing while shaking their heads and making tutting sounds, like builders considering a bad job you wanted them to fix. "Tut tut tut. No speech, disordered social skills, sensory issues. This is going to cost you!!!"'

Ashley Blaker has six children, three of whom have an SEN diagnosis. Between endless meetings, countless therapists, public humiliations, failed playdates, surreal monologues, and occasional violence, it's certainly not what anyone would call a 'normal household - but would he want it any other way?

Normal Schmormal is part-memoir, part how-to guide, highlighting the many challenges, as well as the hugely rewarding elements, of parenting children with additional needs. Written with humor, compassion, and a lot of love, it's a must-read for parents, carers, and teachers of children with SEN, either looking for a bit of support or in need of a very big laugh.

Weight: 506g
Dimension: 145 x 225 x 38 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780008558116