People whine about how hard it is to have an autistic child, or any kind of exceptional child. All too often there are terrible news reports about parents who have killed their handicapped or autistic children because they were such a horrid burden. Even more horrifying is when the press perspective or quotes are full of sympathy for the murderer because killing your own child is “understandable” because a person can’t help but be insanely stressed from dealing with the child’s abnormality. Excuse me; that should be the alleged murderers; trials haven’t happened yet for several of these cases.
Holy shit! Parenting is hard. Period. Yeah, there are bad days. Some days you feel like you’ll never get to eat your food at the proper temperature, or go potty or take a shower uninterrupted, or sleep through the night. Some days you feel like you’ll never finish the endless assessments, or learning more about the alphabet soup of ADHD, APD, ASD, TS, DSM, IEP, or attending special school meetings. Some days you feel like you’ll never get through the little chats with the police officer on your doorstep, or the hormonal teenager angst, or the getting homework done and turned in so the grades reflect a little of the smarts behind the scholastic ennui.
Amazingly, this is true regardless of what sorts of kids you end up with.
It’s true that there are some problems with autistic children that one doesn’t have as often with neurotypical children. There are also problems with NT children that one doesn’t often have with ASD children (when was the last time you read a blog by a parent sighing over how their autistic kid wanted to invite two dozen kids for a birthday party at Chuckie Cheez followed by a sleepover?) Different is not worse.
Aspie kid was a “runner” as a toddler. With my faceblindness I have great difficulty finding people in crowds; tracking down a small child that has bolted into the mobs of people at a mall would have been dangerously slow. Thankfully my other kid was four years older and could help me. I ended up having the tot in one of those child-harness & leash setups when we went shopping. People would give me dirty looks because I was a “horrid mommy who put their kid on a leash”. Frankly, I was a concerned mommy who wanted to keep her kid safe, because this child was fast, strong and inclined to dash off when intrigued by something.
There were also meltdowns, which being unaware of autism at the time, were to me simply “being too tired” and/or “having a tantrum”. So I ended up figuring out what the triggers usually were, and finding ways of circumventing those. We also learned how to calm down, and how to recognise when things were starting to get to be Too Much. I also learned the fine art of calmly saying, “Having a temper tantrum is not going to make me change my mind. When you calm down, then we will shop some more.” (I used a lot of If-Then and When-Then constructs when dealing with my toddlers; they could understand the binary constructs, and it helped them make sense of cause and effect.) Of course, passers-by would want to intervene and try to comfort/appease the child or chastise me for having a crying, floor-kicking kid on the grocery aisle floor. I also acquired the other fine art of smiling, nodding, and reassuring them, “It’ll be okay in a minute or two.”
This child also had/has distinct clothing and food preferences. Some relatives called this “picky”. I thought of it as merely having … preferences. I like my clothes or my food a certain way; why wouldn’t anyone else?
Sure everything was all about orcas when younger. Sure made gift-giving easy. Now it’s videogames (shocking, I know). Sure makes gift-giving easy. (Unlike dad, who has neither perseverations nor any particular hobbies; is that just so weird, or what?!)
Different is not worse. It’s just different. Rearing children is going to do major things to your daily life structure, your bank account, your living room furniture, your social life, and so on. That’s real life. Whining because your life isn’t going the way you thought it was going to, or like some kind of posed ideal family scenario from a greeting card, is simply whining.
Meanwhile, learn how to have fun with your children. Figure out how they learn, as unique individuals. Experience how they share their thoughts and feelings, as unique individuals. Take photographs, collect stories about funny family moments, and build up that group identity of “this is the sort of stuff that makes our family because we’re all part of it”.
DON’T EVER wait until “things get back to normal” or “when this is all over” to do anything. There is no “normal”. This is it. This is life. Fun is something you make, not something that happens to you. Families is who you are, not something you wish would be. Love each other, live it, enjoy it.
(And bake cookies, because cold milk and warm cookies with your fingerprints pressed into the tops are great family-glue.)
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