What are you thinking when we say, ‘We get it. We understand’? Do you think we do? We probably don’t get it. What parent does? How can we possibly begin to understand what it’s like to have a sibling with Down’s Syndrome when we have never experienced it ourselves?

I know it’s confusing when we ask you to help her then we tell you off for doing too much. When we demand that you take her to the toilet and then yell at you for pulling her trousers down when she’s screaming at you. Because she just wants to do that bit herself. When we ask you to help her with the iPad then tell you off for answering the questions because we won’t ever know what she understands otherwise.

Trudy needs, above all, to learn to be independent but sometimes she needs some support to get there. We know that, but do you? Do you know why we appear totally contradictory at times? Can we expect you to understand the fine line between helping and doing things for her?

You’ve been stuck with your sister in lockdown for what seems an age now, and we keep saying that at least you have a playmate. But does it sometimes seem infuriating that she isn’t exactly the playmate you would have wanted? I am sure most siblings across the country feel like that.

But just as you might be thinking, wishing you could see your own friends again, Trudy comes down the stairs in your pants or dresses up in the bear’s sunglasses with an army hat on and a hi-viz jacket, and we all burst out laughing. Or when her feet join us at the dinner table as if there were another person hiding under her chair. Trudy is hilarious and undoubtedly the most unpredictable human being I know. She is a creature of impulse, licking the snow to see how it tastes, digging it up with a spade because that’s what we do with sand, don’t we? She plays endless games of hide and seek with anything she can find, toys, people, dinosaurs, or cafes with leaves and twigs on anything she can sit on.

We try to understand but we probably won’t. Life with Trudy is like no other life just as you can’t compare an apple with a pear or a life with any other, but it’s a crazy whirlwind of spontaneity and imagination. We can’t choose our family but each member of it offers an angle we would never achieve by ourselves and our lives would now be incomplete without them. So, we don’t ask you to be grateful because you’re 7 but bear with us as we try to offer the best possible life to you both.

Your mum and dad