Honesty...or the Hopes of a Mother.....

MY SON HAS ASKED ME TO EDIT/DELETE PART OF THIS POST.  AS ALWAYS, I HAVE HONORED HIS REQUEST.


Let's face it...from the moment a woman becomes pregnant until the end of her days as a mother, she has dreams for her baby and its future.  We all do, but we don't all admit it.  We hold that baby and we see a future athlete, scholar, Nobel Prize winner, or the person who will change the world.  We see the Prom King or Queen, the Valedictorian, the star Quarterback...basically, whatever we probably were not but we hope our child will be.  It's not realistic...you know it and I know it.  It is, however, human nature to want our children to be "more" than we were.  I admit, I have had these thoughts as I held my children...I still have them.  Every day brings reality and we revise our hopes, dreams, and expectations without changing the depth of our love for our child.

The hardest thing about having a child on the Autistic Spectrum is that reality can be as heartless as the people who don't understand our child and his/her potential.  Our first years with our son were so hopeful.  He was exceptionally bright with a large vocabulary at a very early age.  He was social...he flirted with everyone and loved being around people.  He didn't have any noticeable issues...or at least that's what we told ourselves.  Our son spent his first years with adults.  He was the first child, first grandchild, first everything.  We had nothing to compare his progress to and he was happy, so we were happy.  He did have an aversion to screaming kids...he felt he was being physically attacked if another child screamed near him.  Truth be told, neither of our kids were "screamers" and we all have a sensitivity to "screamers".  When he was just shy of his 5th birthday, our daughter was born and her rare bouts of crying never bothered him at all...but crying is different from screaming.

When he started preschool, we began to see what reality can do to a child.  He didn't quite "fit" in and he knew it.  He didn't know why the other kids didn't really "like" him which was really sad because he tried so hard to find a friend.  When he started kindergarten, he became a different child.  Our once sunshiny, outgoing, happy little boy disappeared and was replaced with a sadder little boy who would just tell us enough to make it seem like things were going okay.  While I was pushing him to invite classmates to play, those kids were teasing him relentlessly and usually, their parents were aware of what was going on.  They condoned it because it was "better" to be the parent of a bully than to be the parent of a child who was being bullied.  Sometimes it was subtle things but most of the time, the kids were brutal.  Because our son was quite large for his age, we taught him to keep from physically fighting back.  Unfortunately, other parents didn't teach their kids the same thing.  He never fought back...he just shut himself down.  By the Second Grade, he was being treated for depression and anxiety.  Let me say that again...by the SECOND GRADE, he was being treated for depression and anxiety.  A child in second grade should not be depressed or anxious.  We didn't get a diagnosis for Asperger's Syndrome until he was 13 years old.  He spent his entire elementary school period in a haze of medications and side effects as we struggled to find how to help him.

Our son is now 25 years old.  He doesn't have good memories from school.  My heart aches because even though we have spent years upon years of telling him that he has done nothing "wrong", that different isn't "bad", society still hasn't changed.  Once people get to know him without hearing about his "history", they are impressed with him and his perseverance.  He may have taken a little longer to reach his goals, but his road has definitely been harder than most young adults.

I still see the little baby boy I held in my arms and I still see his potential.  My vision is clearer and my expectations have been adjusted, but I believe with all my heart that he will achieve all that he was meant to achieve.  He has changed the world....the world of the people who know and love him are changed for the better since he came to be.  We are wiser, calmer, more patient, more loving, more thankful for the little things in life that make it worth living.  We are just waiting for the rest of society to catch up to us....