Autism is a life long developmental disability that affects 1 in 100 people. It affects the way a person communicates and how they see the world around them.

Ambitious about Autism is the National Charity for autistic children and young people championing their rights and creating opportunities. They stand with autistic children and young people by providing services, raising awareness, understanding and by campaigning for change.

My Story: (Updated)

On 18th August my Mum had a cardiac arrest at home and sadly despite paramedics arriving on the scene so quickly and after getting her back twice, in the end she didn’t make it.

I honestly don’t know what to do or how to feel, I just really miss my mum and can’t believe she’s not here anymore.

My mum told me that she was going to watch me when I did the marathon and although I never told her this, I was really looking forward to seeing her there cheering me on and now that’s a experience I’m not going to have.

It’s difficult because I thought the marathon was going to be one of the best days of my life as I got to share this with all my family, but now my mum isn’t going to be there I think all I can do now is just try and make her proud and hope that she’s there with me in spirit.

So while I will be running for ambitious about autism and hope to raise lots of money for such a fantastic cause. I’m now running for Mum too ♥️

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Lily and Isla Austim Journey-

As you all will know Lily and Isla last year were both diagnosed as having Autism.

It’s hard to really put it into words really what being told that made me feel like.

I’m not sure if I felt like I failed as their Dad or that maybe there was something I could have done differently to help them more than I already was?

I just remember feeling for a long time that it was all my fault and that somehow I’ve done this to them.

It wasn’t until the paediatrician told us that Lily and Isla had autism that I finally accepted it. I don’t know why? I thought maybe they just have delayed speech? I just didn’t want the label attached to my girls because I always felt like by having a label people would treat them differently.

All I saw was two happy girls who loved to play and spent so much of their time laughing.

Now, Autism doesn’t change who my girls are nor will it ever change how beautiful and brilliant they both are but what it does mean is that our family is just a little bit different than most peoples.

Lily and Isla were our first children and when they were born they didn’t come with an instruction manual.

So we had a rough idea of what we was expected to do, but because there was two of them I think for the most part me and Hannah were just winging it 😂🙏🏻

Now the beauty about having twins as a dad was I got double the amount of practise which meant I got really good at stuff really quick!

Like changing nappies for example and winding the girls after a bottle.

When both girls got Colic it was like I trained for this moment my entire life because the only way we could soothe them and take that pain away was when I held them upright with their knees tucked high and I balanced them on my forearm because they were so tiny.

Whenever they had colic and they would scream, I would always be the one that got that wind up.

But it wasn’t until Lily and Isla was at school that we began to understand they needed additional support to access their education.

Lily and Isla were Covid babies which meant a lot of NHS services had long waiting lists which meant it was impossible to access the support they needed.

They also didn’t do a buy one get one free option when it came to childcare places so preschool was something we simply couldn’t afford which meant Nursery was the first time they got to experience a classroom environment.

There have been lots of hurdles in Lily and Isla’s short life so far which as a family we’ve had to try and overcome and whilst so many of you say how easy Hannah makes it look, trust me when I say this it’s not easy.

One of the most difficult things I struggle to deal with is when your children are non verbal and they are getting really upset because they are trying SO HARD to communicate with you but you just can’t interpret what they are saying.

You watch the tears roll down their cheeks, they start stimming and waving their arms around and you can see how hard they are trying to communicate with you but despite your best efforts you just can’t pinpoint the one thing they wanna share with you.

Everytime that happens, a piece of your heart breaks and you will never get it back.

There is a reason why 8 in 10 partners of autistic children separate- and that reason is because it’s really really hard and it requires you to stop everything else that your doing in your life whether it’s your career or any hobbies / interests you might have because for a very long time they require you to focus completely on them.

It’s not just trying to help them communicate and develop language, it’s keeping them safe because one thing both Lily and Isla don’t have is any sense of danger whatsoever.

You just can’t take your eyes of them.

When you go out as a family because your burnt out and just don’t want to cook tonight on two occasions Isla has somehow wandered off and we’ve had a whole facility looking for her because she’s moved away from a birthday party food table and in her stealthy ways she’s now going down the slide in the soft play downstairs.

OR in a pub she needs the toilet so just decided after playing on the outdoor climbing frames she will take herself to the toilet and not tell us.

You literally have to watch her constantly and can’t take your eyes off her and this is still the case and she’s now 6 🙂

Now I refuse to be another statistic.

This is when we asked for help and started to work with Rebecca who is a speech therapist.

This completely changed our approach to parenting and it gave us insight into how our girls communicated and what we needed to do to meet them where they were.

Toys that used to be on display and there was lots of them were now in plastic lock boxes.

Certain foods the girls would open the fridge to eat or climb on worktops to get too where now out of reach and we began to put Lily and Isla in as many positions as possible where they were forced to communicate with us.

This started with communication boards.

Lily would point to her picture and underneath it says ‘I’ then ‘want’ then ‘blueberries’ please.

This is just one example, we made communication boards for literally everything.

We found out Lily and Isla were gestalt learning processors and as Rebecca took us through this programme which had 6 stages of language development as the weeks and months went by our two little girls began to speak.

The speech therapy was working and not only could we see the progress but we could look into the next stage of development and we understood what to work on them with and what to look out for.

Most people will not understand how big of a deal this is when your goals are not for your children to excel at sports or be super intelligent at school.

I wanted to hear my children’s voices, I wanted to be able to have conversations with Lily and Isla and ask them how their day went or how they are feeling.

Lily and Isla are now 6 and this year in particular they have come on leaps and bounds at school.

At the beginning of the year they took a phonics test and because they refused to participate because they didn’t want to do phonics they wanted to play outside with the water table and balance bikes they both scored 0

Just last week Lily and Isla took the same test again and not only did they both Partisipate they scored 33/40 and 31/40 which from speaking to their headteacher they believe will both be a pass.

I am so proud of them and how hard they’ve worked in school this year.

Once upon time they would not partisipate in the class now Lily partispates 80% of the lesson fully with all the other students.

Isla is also participating more and more and eventually she will be at 80% as well.

One of my missions as a Dad is to somehow find a way to ensure there is one member of staff in every school who is a qualified speech therapist. I feel like this needs to be a permanent position within every school and the government should put the incentives in the right place to encourage more people to want to train to become a speech therapist and help our non speaking children and any other children who need additional support.

Once upon a time Lily and Isla didn’t have any words which meant they can’t advocate for themselves so we have had to do that for them. There will be so many children in this country who desperately need access to support like this and Ambitious about Autism are one of the charities in this country who help families and young people get access to the support they need.

I never planned to run a marathon, it was never something that was on my bucket list.

However, after having two autistic children and going through the whole EHCP process and making it out the other side.

I know how hard it is to get your kids the support they need, and I also know in order to achieve extraordinary things it requires extraordinary efforts.

I am willing to fight every year for the rest of my life to raise as much money as possible for Ambitious about Autism.

I will run 26.2 miles for Lily and Isla because I’m their DAD and I want to set a good example for them and show them that when life gets hard we do not give up.

It doesn’t matter if the odds are stacked against us, if it’s important and this is then we will find a way to get through it.

My girls will always have autism, they won’t always look like they have it but in some ways I worry their autism will make them vulnerable when they grow up and my job as their dad is to help them become strong independent young girls.

One of the ways we do that is by showing them how we overcome difficult things.

On April 26th 2026 I will complete that marathon and I will get that medal and I will hug my wife and three children on that finish line and I will hit my sponsorship target.

PLEASE HELP ME DO THIS AND COME ON THIS JOURNEY WITH ME. 🙏🏻

I love my girls so much and I’m doing this for them. ♥️