As you can see from the title I'm a mother of a challenged kid, her name is tala, hence the name of my blog thetalaeffect.blogspot.com. Anyways i'd like to start off this blog by introducing myself.

My name is Rola, I'm a chemistry teacher in The  British section in Manor House School.

I'm married to Ali Ayache and we have one child, Tala, the love of my life. we live in Egypt and my husband is Lebanese, his family lives in Lebanon.

I created this blog to share my experience with a challenged kid here in Egypt, the aim of this blog is to reach out not only to mothers of challenged kids but the whole society in general. We lack education and knowledge of this area in particular in the middle east.

This makes it really hard for families with challenged kids and the people around them to cope with the situation. it's not only the family but the people around them should also educate themselves about challenged kids and understand the emotional roller coaster that parents go through to be able to deal with them day in, day out.

As a mother, since the day i was pregnant with Tala and i started planning how our life will be, I imagined which school she'd go to, how would she look like, when is a good age to start piano lessons and what kind of sport is she going to excel in.. Never ever have I imagined that one day a doctor will tell me your daughter has a genetic problem and we have no idea if she's going to walk or talk or how she will develop.. Never ever have I imagined that my biggest dream is just to see her raise her head and get up..

Having a challenged kid blows away all your future dreams, you live day by day, watching, observing, recording and hoping that tomorrow will be better..

but is there an upside to having a challenged kid? of course there is, and that's what I learnt from Tala and would love to share it with you:)) I want to encourage people to talk about their children, take them out to the world, don't feel ashamed of them, don't hide them, don't drown them in all the therapies all day long and deprive them of their childhood. 

Everyday i find it hard to talk to someone about how i feel, because if you don't have a challenged kid, you will NEVER know what I'm talking about so i started writing my feelings down, and as the years go by, i read everything I wrote and realised how much Tala changed me, how I developed with her, how SHE helped me just as much as I helped her.

Stay tuned for more of my experience with Tala, I hope you find it useful.