On the complexities of relatively privileged parenting

[haddayr]

Once, when Arie was very young and parenting him was feeling like a living hell (sorry, Arie, if you read this later so so so sorry), a friend of mine contentedly reported to me about an evening she had in which she popped corn and let her daughter stay up a little late and they snuggled and watched a movie together

Comments

[kellyhul]

Ooh, if I was the friend who made popcorn and snuggled, sorry if I was being oblivious.

[haddayr]

You weren't, actually, but that wasn't the point. Mentioning to a friend that you had a nice evening with your kid isn't oblivious.

I do think, though, posting about how it gets better and including EVERYONE, especially from the parent of a special-needs kid, IS.

[kellyhul]

I am very, very happy that parenting has become easier for you and Jan, by the way.

And I see your point.

A friend of mine back in MI is a Social Worker, and she works at a children's hospice agency. She helps the families, especially the children, in a zillion ways, but I have no idea how she manages her job emotionally. She is a super-hero.

[deborahw37]

Haven't caught up on the comments to your earlier post yet so this is uninformed from the heart generalisation but, what the heck

[haddayr]

Thanks, and I appreciate the comments about teenagers. One thing about having a kid with oppositional defiance disorder: I'm already well acquainted with slamming doors. :-)

[lady_mishegas]

Sometimes unwarranted optimism is the only thing that gets me through the dark days. I mean, maybe it WON'T get better, and there were days early on where every day would be worse than the last. But even if it doesn't get better (and my post was about something as delightfully mundane as potty training an ASD child), spending today believing that it will get better will not hurt me any more tomorrow if it doesn't. That will hurt enough on its own.

[haddayr]

Oh, but it will get better. I mean, oh there I go again. But it will. Maybe in ways you didn't expect, but I think we can each find some way in which our parenting gets better. I think I just need to stay specific to my kid, is all.

Potty-training a kid on the spectrum is a nightmare. Or can be. The vast majority of our kids work it out. The stats are on your side!

[lady_mishegas]

I hear you on being specific. It hurts terribly to walk around in my shoes and to be trying to be sensitive to nuance and other people's feelings, and to STILL get called out on ability-privilege or white-privilege or education-privilege, or any of the other privileges that I enjoy. And I'm such a n00b to the parenting a child with special needs milleau, I'm bound to say something that offends somebody!

Nevertheless, I appreciated your post and wanted to read it to my husband (do they really sleep through the night???) though we ran out of time. But I totally cringed when I read that other person's response, because of COURSE maybe it doesn't get better!

And then I felt bad for demanding to hear that it will! But I did need to hear that. So I promise that if it doesn't, I won't blame you. Much. XO

[haddayr]

They sleep all night, from 8:00 to around 7:00. Every night, absenting nightmares or colds.

It was so so hard, too, for years. I got so sleep deprived I hallucinated that bugs were crawling on me.

(We do use melatonin, which changed things abruptly. I take it myself, now, too! No idea if a lowered melatonin level is related to ASD or not. I share it not as advice, necessarily, but as data.)

[tigerbright]

I am really really glad you wrote this follow-up post.

I have awesome days with my kids that are immediately followed by bad ones, and I react by running away and closing the door, sometimes.

[haddayr]

How old are your kids, again? (I want to be reassuring without promising anything.)

[haddayr]

(And I ask because what you are describing exactly describes what my life was like maybe a year or two ago, and then I started to notice that the bad days were slowly beginning to space themselves apart. We still have them -- boy do we EVER -- but they are getting less and less frequent and/or more and more predictable.)

[haddayr]

Okay; I went and looked up your kids' ages. My life was very, very, very hard, then. VERY HARD. It is now merely 'sometimes hard.'

That is all I will say, since I'm promising not to promise things.

[haddayr]

Aw, thanks!

I think where I went wrong was in the "I promise."