Apraxia Awareness Day is May 14th. This year to help celebrate Apraxia Awareness Day we decided to do Random Acts of Kindness to help spread the word about Apraxia.
My son Thatcher has Severe Childhood Apraxia of Speech. We had never heard of Apraxia before his diagnosis five years ago. Now it is a part of our daily life and we love being able to bring awareness to this mostly unknown disorder that effects 2 out of every 1000 children.
For more of Thatcher’s Story you can watch this video.
In years past we have worn blue and asked friends and family to wear blue with us, but this year we took it a step further with the random acts of kindness and it was AWESOME!
I made up some photo cards that we could give to those we served or attach to our Random Acts of Kindness.
(Here is the example of the photo card.)
I printed 50 cards and kept about 20 for us and divided the others up among friends who wanted to be involved.
It turned out to be such a great experience and we will definitely be making this into a tradition. The kids enjoyed doing the services and through the services and posting about it them on social media we feel like we reached more people then ever this year.
Here are some of the Acts of Kindness we did.
- We took donuts to the elementary for all of the teachers and staff,
- We delivered homemade cookies to the local fire house.
- Paid for the order of the person behind us at Burger King.
- We delivered homemade cookies to a nursing home for the staff.
- We passed out balloons to small children going into the grocery store with their parents.
- We taped coins onto candy and sticker machines at the dollar store.
- We heart attacked a friend whose dog had recently become paralyzed.
- We delivered a plant to a friend whose husband is out of town for a long time.
- We gave water bottles to a group doing service at our favorite park.
- We delivered root beer float ingredients to three families in our neighborhood.
Here are some of the things our friends did and posted on social media:
- Mowed their neighbors lawn.
- Took their neighbors garbage can to the curb for them.
- Took a family in need dinner.
- Took flowers to their neighbor.
- Took flowers to a teacher whose mother had just passed away.
- Saved a Turtle that was trying to cross the road.
- Helped cleanup a rack of stuff that spilled over at a garage sale.
- Put some money and note inside a Redbox video they returned so that who ever gets it next can buy a treat to eat while they watch it.
- It was amazing! Many more people told me that they didn’t post it on social media but they thought of Thatcher throughout the day and looked for ways they could do little acts of kindness and service for others.
They whole experience was incredible. Being able to not only see and feel the support of so many amazing friends who love Thatcher but to also make more people aware of such a unknown disorder was such an amazing feeling. Thatcher loved every minute. He made this video to say thank you.
So many awesome children are unable to speak and struggle so much to gain a voice. I hope that by continuing to celebrate Apraxia Awareness Day each year, more people will gain empathy for those who fight the battle of this rare communication disorder.
EVERY CHILD DESERVES A VOICE!!!
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