Ben hadn’t ever had a birthday party with friends. It’s not like we didn’t celebrate his birthday: we had a little gathering every year with family and close friends, including his brother, sister and the kids of our friends. We’d had cakes and garlands, songs and presents. Every year James makes a video of Ben’s last year and we all watch it together. We instigated a tradition of birthday ice skating at Somerset House. But no big party with friends and chaos.

This was partly because Ben didn’t seem to really like parties. He found the number of people and the noise difficult. He didn’t enjoy party games with lots of kids and often cried when we sang him happy birthday, especially if we clapped too loudly at the end. He didn’t have an obvious friendship group in the way Max, for example, did – his school has never been local and his classes have been smaller – so it was hard to know who to invite. I didn’t want him to have a party for the sake of a party. Also Ben couldn’t and then didn’t request a birthday party in the way that Max and Molly do, relentlessly. We didn’t think he would enjoy a typical child birthday party so we didn’t organise one. Or perhaps I felt too sad about the fact that I wasn’t sure how to pull together a birthday party with friends for him, so I didn’t.  Or both.

But then Ben was turning ten years old which felt like a milestone to mark. Ben was invited to a friend’s party at an ice rink and ice skating is one of Ben’s favourite things. I was thrilled to realise it’s possible (though not cheap) to briefly hire an ice rink. All of this culminated in …

Last weekend he had a tenth birthday party with family and friends, kids from school and home and their siblings. Thirteen kids on the ice, six of them using wheelchairs. At the start we were the only ones there and Ben and James swirled around alone, the whole rink to themselves. Ben’s friends arrived and the rink was a wonderful mix of semi- and in-competent skaters offering to push wheelchairs in the interests of their own stability. Molly and her cousin wobbled around holding onto plastic penguins. Max approached it with admirable confidence.

When we finished skating, the kids that could eat helped themselves to carbohydrates and sugar and Ben sat happily amongst them. Then we lit candles and sang him happy birthday around some amateur egg-free cupcakes. As we sang, he beamed, thoroughly enjoying the noise and the attention. I had pre-blended a cake at home so we fed him cake via his feeding tube as others tucked in. In the unphotogenic surroundings of a local authority ice rink, sat in front of a vending machine, Ben had fun and after ten years we had worked out how to give him a party he enjoyed.

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We then moved on to a pub which usually caters for football fans and so had wheelchair-accessible open spaces, friendly staff and plasma screens everywhere you looked. We had not planned this, and we’d never been to the pub before, but Ben loves a screen and watching football pundits appeared to be exactly the post-party vibe he was looking for. (The Tollington Arms was as welcoming a pub as you could hope for).

I am so delighted to have been a mother to this boy for ten years and, this year, to have found a way to celebrate with his friends. I think we got there for Ben’s tenth birthday because we had waited to find the kind of party he could enjoy. It’s taken time for us to facilitate his friendships. It’s only after ten years that he’s come round to the idea of being the centre of attention at parties. All of it culminated in a bunch of children, half using wheelchairs, zooming round an ice rink to the sound of George Ezra (again) and it was glorious. He is glorious.