What’s next for Unicorns?

By Cat McGill

A lighthearted and laugh-out-loud account of life, the universe, and being three years old.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cat McGill
• Release date: Dec 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781393415831

Cat McGill

Hello! Thanks for reading my book :) I’m Cat, I’m a musician and writer, and a mum to two children with Special Needs. I’m autistic myself as well, though I wasn’t diagnosed until my late thirties. Ever since I can remember I’ve been fascinated by people - their relationships with one another, what makes them tick, how they learn, etc. I decided when I was nine that I was going to study psychology at university, and - never having been able to make my mind up whether I wanted to be a musician or a psychologist - I have bounced between the two ever since. My debut book is called ‘Me, the Boy, and The Monster’, and is an honest account of the first couple of years with our adopted son, and the trauma he faced, and still faces.  I’ve tried to pull together a few of the psychological theories that have really helped me to understand Tickle’s behaviour, and explain them in an accessible way, giving examples from our day to day life. As I write this I’m about to undertake a project called ‘Adopting a Musical Approach’ where I’m looking at how I can use music to support adopted children and their families. For more information do have a look at my website, or say hi on social media - you can find me @folkycat on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Book preview

Introduction

Kids say the funniest things. However, I’ve never met a child who churned out one liners quite as frequently as mine did.

When I’m writing about her, I call my daughter ‘Fairy’. She’s 11 years old as I write this, and has given her blessing for me to publish this insight in to her developing brain. She thoroughly enjoys reading about herself, and cackled her way through the draft copy of this book, pointing out her favourite quotes. She’s her own biggest fan, really.

Like many things these days, this book started out as a series of Facebook updates. (If I was starting it now it would probably be on Twitter and would already have gone viral.) Back in those heady days when Facebook was new and exciting, as a new-parent-of-a-small-child I naturally assumed that all of my friends were dying to hear the latest ‘hilarious’ anecdote about my adorable offspring, and the wonders of social networking made that very easy to do. (Some might say too easy...)

It turned out that quite a large selection of my friends – rather than instantly blocking me – seemed to actually enjoy the updates I was posting. You’d expect this from family members, and maybe some close friends, but I was getting comments from friends without children of their own (usually the most outspoken against smug-parentness), young male friends, semi-acquaintances that I only just know well enough to feel awkward about turning down a friend request... I lost count of the number of times people asked me to put all the quotes in a book before I actually started paying attention. We even created a new word – a friend once very proudly told me that his daughter had done a Fairy-ism the day before.

In fact, my friends were so keen for more Fairy-isms that I started getting pestered, almost daily, for new updates. I took to following her round with a pen and paper in the desperate hope that she would say something funny, knowing that I wouldn't have a moments peace until she did.

The rate of production has slowed down as she’s got older however (since she discovered Harry Potter she’s much more likely to be quoting that (or Percy Jackson) than saying anything funny), but at least it’s given me time to pull everything together in to a book so I can share it with you!

Most of it is Fairy in her own words. Some of it is me in my own words. All of it is real.

Mummy's diary.

Fairy is trying to hide behind a spoon.