Hello! Welcome to Dancing Wombat!
Hi everyone! I’m Jennie Irving.
Dancing Wombat is my blog for all of us who nurture, guide and teach kids with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other associated, complex conditions*.
Dancing Wombat is a treasure trove of gems of daily lived experience — routines, conversations, experiments, failures, hard-won milestones, bone-weariness, hilarity, anguish and relief.
Like anyone, I get things right and wrong as I raise and teach young people with ASD. I don’t promote particular ways of thinking or claim to be an expert. My blogs are my conversation with you.
Delve in and enjoy my stories — I love writing them! I hope Dancing Wombat gets you thinking differently about ASD, and comforts and encourages you. Best of all, Dancing Wombat is proudly agenda free, ad free and therapeutic!
*Other ASD-related conditions include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), intellectual disability (ID), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), depression and anxiety.
Drop in – share your ideas and experiences, frustrations and triumphs.
Our Blog
Taking a guilt trip
2020 was an incredible year for travelling. If you were a a virus, you got to travel everywhere. Here in Melbourne, we travelled extensively the 5 km radius around our homes. For many of us, that was of course the extent of our 2020 voyages. Unless you also count the...
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Treasure yesterday, embrace today, cherish the promise of tomorrow
A couple of days ago, trying to help my mother with something, I was overwhelmed by a powerful feeling of nausea. Nothing COVID-related. But as she was trying to explain a particular situation, I just felt sicker and sicker, to the point I thought I would vomit. Mind...
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Scaffolding for independent learning
Scaffolding supports things, including you and me We’ve all walked past scaffolding. Those skeletons of poles and platforms positioned around buildings to support their construction (and protect us), then gradually removed as they’re no longer needed. When you go...
read moreAbout Jennie Irving
I’m a believer in small things that can make big goals happen.
Based in the beautiful city of Melbourne, Australia, my life journey has taken me from corporate law to language teaching to performing arts teaching in a small specialist education setting…together with raising four great kids, three of them with ASD.
I believe that sharing and talking about our experiences — the good, the bad and the ugly — help overcome silence and stigma so we can build a more understanding and caring community where people with special needs genuinely belong, can prosper and flourish.
Small voices matter. Mine is a small voice among many that, together, can roar.
