INSTAGRAM IS A saturated platform these days.
As the social media juggernaut shows no signs of slowing down, people are looking to bring some more reality to their feeds. No one does that more so than Nicole, from @my_boy_blue_2017.
Nicole is a single mother to her son, Riley, who is autistic. At 15 months old, Nicole noticed that her little boy wasn’t quite like the others as his speech began to drop off.
“We came to the stage with Riley that he was completely mute,” she said.
When Riley’s doctor mentioned the word ‘autism’, Nicole said “she went home and cried for three days”.
Following his assessment, Nicole was told Riley was autistic. Since his diagnosis, she has endevoured to raise awareness about autism, inclusion, disability, among other topics via her Instagram story. Her work resulted in her taking home the award for Best Overall Influencer at the 2018 Beauty Blog Awards.
At the start of the month, Nicole kicked off a new initiative called the #SignLanguageChallenge, in which she would teach her followers how to sign a word a day in Lámh for the month of February on her Instagram story.
Lámh is a manual sign system used by children and adults with intellectual disability and communication needs in Ireland, as opposed to Irish Sign Language used within the deaf community. In short, it’s a simplified version used as a means of communication for non-verbal autistic children and their family members.
However, four days in to the challenge, Nicole claims she was asked to stop teaching Lámh on her story by the charity who run courses on the sign language, Lámh.org. (Lámh.org did not return DailyEdge.ie‘s request for comment.)
With hugely influential influencers like Ellie Kelly, Jen Hatton and Karen Constantine on board teaching their audiences every day, the intervention came as a blow.
“The only thing we want for our kids is for them to be included, to be accepted, and to be understood,” Nicole said in an Instagram post.
Following the imminent backlash on social media, Lámh have since rowed back on their decision, with the board of the charity contacting Nicole directly to apologise.
“The board are one million percent behind the 28 day challenge,” she explained on her story, now titled ‘#RileysChallenge’. “They think it’s an absolutely positive thing to do.”
Class! How do I get involved?
- Follow @my_boy_blue_2017 on Instagram.
- Every day for the month of February, Nicole posts a word to sign on her Instagram story.
- Record yourself making the sign and post it to your story with the hashtag #RileysChallenge.
- That’s it!
At times, social media can feel extremely overwhelming, and those who argue against the public’s sue of it are well-versed at this point. Nicole’s movement shines a light on an area of life which is regularly ignored in mainstream media, making her truly influential indeed.
