Lily, participant in City of Boroondara parent/child Mother Goose program:

'As a mum, it's okay to have a few bad days, that there's definitely no shame. 

My growth with knowing that I don't feel good and being able to voice that rather than holding it all in when you have to look after a child and then pretend everything is okay, and I hope a lot of other people in the community would do that as well. 

Mother Goose was the only place where we know we could go and we could have fun, and there's no judgement. 

Being a first mum with no family support was scary. My parents still live in China, and that was really, really challenging, but at the same time, I felt that there's hope because we're going to create our little family together. 

We found out he's got global developmental delays at the age of 4 months. I think uncertainty was really, really hard. I felt that I couldn't talk to my family because of the time difference. And then being an immigrant here, I don't really have a lot of friends that go through the same journey at the same time, and that's where it's really, really difficult. 

We moved to this area, and I called up the Maternal Child Health nurse, so very quickly, we had someone visiting our home, and then she recommended a few different resources that we could attend as a family. 

So Ollie and I went to the Mother Goose, and ever since going there, we never looked back. It was the best experience ever. 

We went there every week, and he was just so happy. The amount of progress that he's made is phenomenal. He's just continued to progress so, so much more than the Ollie that I knew when I got handed the diagnosis.

And that's not just us on our own, it takes a village to raise a child. That's the community that actually support us to be strong. 

I think the biggest part that I probably feel is because I don't have family support here, community is my family, and that's where I benefited most. He did his first crawl at Mother Goose, and everyone just clapped for him, and then we all lost some happy tears. 

But it was great to see that we've got so much support. You never know what's around the corner. That could be something really, really fantastic. And that's what we experienced.