Article. Parent angry and acting as victim

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http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009 ... of-autism/


Okay, so this article would be pointless to leave a comment on at the source, because it is from 2009, but I know stuff like this is still being published.

Today I sat at church for 45 minutes after the end of the service, because my five year old suddenly decided right before we left the house that morning that he needed to bring his bag of "squaddies" (2 inch high action figures based on Marvel characters--very rugged construction). After the organ music and all the people, they have coffee and cake, and he is comfortable enough there to go into his calming mode--dumping the squaddies and lining them up and then fighting them down the line. This takes a while. About 45 minutes, in fact as he has over 50 of the things.

I was extremely pleased that he is comfortable enough to do something that calms him down so much around people that he doesn't know all that well, so I sat there drinking my coffee and when he had packed them back up, I took home a calm, happy child.

Last night we had a bath time incident--a bit of water on the face--that led to me restraining (or at least trying to keep hold of the slippery little dude) for thirty minutes a wet, naked five year old that was trying to kick and hit his brother, because apparently that's who you need to hit and kick when you've had water splashed on your face. This afternoon, I got to clean poop off the side of the sink cabinet again, because, "I just needed to do it" according to him.

I mean, I know that life isn't made up entirely of sweet moments, and sometimes circumstances dictate that we can't accommodate our children's needs at that moment for whatever reason. I've been the mom chasing a kid through the store. I've been the mom who had Walmart employees oh so helpfully suggest that I leave the store when my middle kid was three and having a meltdown, and I was alone with my HFA 4 year old (not big enough to push the buggy and in shutdown over the middle kid's fit), and a friend's barely ambulatory 4 yr old with CP. (I had already called back-up and we got out pretty soon after that, but oh my, that guy kind of withered at my response to his "helpful suggestion"). I've lost my temper, yelled at my kids, been frustrated and frazzled and tired. I'm not perfect by any means, but I like to think that I can and do (at least the vast majority of the time) give my kids some compassion and understanding. And just a little of those can make even the worst of situations with any child a lot less of a "nightmare".

It really seems to me that those are the bits that are missing in articles like these. There was really, truly nothing in that article that made me feel like that mom had an iota of insight into her child, or even that she wanted to. It was purely how is this making me look? How is this making me feel? Nothing at all about how overwhelming a store can be for a sensory sensitive kid. Sure sometimes, it can't be helped and you've got to go in or there's not going to be supper, but nothing like that was mentioned, just how the kid embarrasses her. And where was she getting her ideas on how to discipline? I would never drag an overstimulated, melting down child out to a busy sidewalk full of noises, smells, and strange people for a "time out". No wonder the kid is acting up. No mention of how difficult socializing can be for the kid and that small groups are the best, just bemoaning her lack of a social life because he is "difficult" at things like parks and birthday parties.

I don't know why I read the silly article. I know things like that tend to aggravate me.

What do you think?

You are really harsh.

What does this say:







She is just saying her child is overwhelmed, she is overwhelmed. I think she cares about her child, wants to help her child, and is doing her best to recognize the things that are leading to difficulty for her child.

I suspect her child may be more violent than yours and it's not something that can necessarily be blamed on her.

She really can't blame her weight gain on her child though.

Maybe this follow up article will make you feel better:

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009 ... oking-out/


By the way, I'm not sure how I feel about the mom's article about her son. It sounds like she might've written it on a day that wasn't going so well in their household. Hopefully after she got her feelings out it made her feel better. I wish she would've written about the positives about her son because there definitely are positives about autistic children.

The worst part of the article was this, "And there is the toll on our marriage. I brought in a healthy paycheck for many years but as I’ve become my son’s caregiver, my career has been put on the backburner. This has thrust my husband into the stressful, unexpected role of breadwinner. For the first time, we fight about money. We have been at odds over our son’s issues and, given our different parenting styles, how best to deal with them. And he takes so much of my time and energy, there’s not much left over for me, let alone my husband. Somehow, we’re hanging in there, through the unimaginably worst of times."

I can't stand that she wrote that. If they divorce and their son reads this article, he's going to blame himself if he hasn't already blamed himself.

I'm not sure why the mom quit work to care for him either. I guess every situation is different, but my mom and dad have been working full time since I was born until now. They used resources like babysitters, day cares, summer camps, and our school system had a program where children could stay after school and do arts and crafts or sports or whatever we wanted to do until we could get picked up by our parents. I was also busy with soccer from 5-21 years old, so that helped. I don't know why she doesn't reach out for help like that.

Really? Parents aren't allowed to be overwhelmed and not allowed to rant or express their experience about what it's like raising an autistic child so everyone else will understand better? This is what I mean by parents are expected to be god? Not allowed to have emotions and feelings, not allowed to be overwhelmed, must be a robot. I have even seen parents write about their NT kids and how hard it is and how challenging it is. I think it's great to hear about what it's like raising a special needs child because then it makes people be less judgmental and about raising NT kids, it shows people what raising kids is like because lot of people don't know how much work being a parent is and time consuming until they have them.


The only thing that bothered me was when this one mother wrote about her psychopathic child right after the Sandy shooting and she wrote how violent he is and a threat to the whole family and how she has had him hospitalized before and I thought he should be kept away in one and never come out until he has no more violence in him. It should be child endangerment to have a violent kid at home if you have other kids at home. But she had a picture of him and didn't say his real name but she still showed a picture of him. That means anyone who reads that blog and knows them personally will know who the mother is and her child and wow, what a way to destroy her child. If that kid lived near me, I wouldn't even want my son near him or near his property and I would want him pulled out of his class and school and not want the boy on my property either. So just imagine what that mother did to her son who may look charming and sweet on the outside but at home he is horrid and to certain people too. That is what my aspie friend was like, all sweet and charming but at home and in his school and to my brothers he was a monster so Mom and I decided he could never come back to our house. I even had the same reaction when a mother wrote in her Facebook her step son is on pills for behavior disruptive disorder and I looked it up and saw it was a form of ODD and Conduct disorder but it's a NOS label because they don't meet either criteria and I thought "oh great, now I don't want him near my child or at my house and thank goodness we never see them and they have never been over here." My husband and her husband aren't in much contact except for online and they went to school together and were old friends. But thanks mom for telling everyone about your step son how vicious he is just by mentioning his psychopathic condition.


BTW autism is a spectrum so not everyone with it is going to be so time consuming their moms have to quit work to be at home with them. My mom still managed to have time for my brothers and we still managed to go out because I am on the mild end close to normal. I was still time consuming but she still had time for my brothers and the older I got the more time consuming I got because I always had questions to ask and she took her time to explain things to me so I get stuff than just giving up and not bothering to even tell me. That boy in the article sounds more affected by it than me, perhaps severe. I wasn't that violent because I didn't do those things as a child. Mine were more like typical toddler tantrums.

I don't know-- I think that's a pretty accurate portrayal of what Grandma went through raising me, except that I wasn't violent and had so much of my sense of self-worth tied up in marks for academics and behavior that I was terrified to say "boo" to a goose.

Given how poorly I tolerate atypical antipsychotics, I'm glad that diagnosis and the opportunity to medicate didn't exist when I was a little girl-- given Grandma's Depression-generation worship of authority figures and people with high social standing in general and doctors in particular, I would have been a Thorazine zombie at best, dead at worst. I'm glad that a lack of options forced us to weather the bad times and gave me a chance to learn how to be a person. It could've been worse.

I live in terror that it will be worse for my son. He's not violent-- but last Friday he got in trouble for gently pushing back against a little girl who was decidedly in his personal space (in his face would be a better definition). He's not verbally abusive, but he is easily frustrated and argumentative (we call him "Filibuster Buddy" some days) and he really does not have what you'd call an "inside voice."

I really don't give a s**t what we look like in public, either as fill-in-the-blank child pitches a screaming fit or as I lecture them-- loudly-- for misbehaviors or, if necessary, carry a screaming child out of the grocery store over my shoulder like a sack of flour. I KNOW what we look like-- I can feel the stares and hear the comments (and I note that those comments are a lot more likely to be POSITIVE at the local SaveALot than at Giant Eagle where the rich yuppies shop). I just don't CARE. I'm more determined to drag my kids to-- and out of-- the grocery store as many times as it takes for them to learn appropriate behavior. That's what Grandma and Daddy did with me...

...and I learned to go to the grocery store. I can even pass the time of day with the cashier. I can even interact with other shoppers, saying things like "Thank you," "Excuse me," "Do you know where they keep the bacon?" "Can I help you with that, Ma'am?" and "I think baking powder is next to the flour in Aisle 5."

So I really don't give a s**t about the comments (thank God I'm an Aspergirl)! ! But I'll tell you this-- I NEVER, EVER leave the house with my kids without at least a twinge of fear over what might happen. I have speeches practiced for cashiers, other shoppers, and the cops. I have regular arguments with my husband about the need to retain a lawyer, just in case.

Raising an autistic kid IS hard. Raising an autistic kid in a perfectionistic, condescending, judgmental, isolationist society where anything that isn't beautiful isn't welcome and isn't going to be tolerated is EVEN HARDER.

So, as far as I'm concerned, she's welcome to rant about how hard this is for her. Rant on, Autism Mom. We're not going to change anything with candy-coated euphemisms-- frankly, I'm kind of sick of them myself. I think living in a candy-coated, sanitized world has a lot to do with how we got into this mess in the first place.

In many communities here in the US there is pressure to "raise your own children," not give into using caregivers as proxies. Not to mention, babysitters aren't that easy to come by when you have a special needs child. I had my own business when my son was born, not something I could just walk away from, so I HAD to find childcare, yet it was a NIGHTMARE. He sent so many potential caregivers home in tears, because they wanted to take good care of him but he would have absolutely of none of it, only mom would do. I did eventually find my balance with a private nanny, but even though my business was making good money, if you did the math, the childcare pretty much ate up all the profit, so what was the point, really?

So, having been there, I do understand making the choice not to work.

Hell, read the next one: Letting a Daughter With Development Disorders Grow Up.

Back in the day, my Daddy (who we will from now on be referring to, tongue only somewhat in cheek, as Saint Alan of Aspergia) would not have been writing that blog entry.

What would Saint Alan have done?? Honestly, if the diagnosis of Asperger's had existed for me to have it, Saint Alan probably would have been overprotective as all hell. But, absent that diagnosis (and I like to think eventually even with it, as Saint Alan was both amazingly lazy and possessed of a huge amount of dispassionate common sense about things like hound dogs and children), I'm pretty sure Saint Alan would have punished me severely for breaking the rules and betraying his trust...

...and then he would have heard me out, bought me a reflectorized safety vest (blaze orange with lots of silver tape on it, 'cause what Saint Alan had in common sense he paid for in fashion sense-- Saint Alan was the kind of guy who thought he looked dashing in a tie-dye t-shirt with Old Glory suspenders and a pillowtick cap), vehemently instructed me to walk ON THE SHOULDER, FACING TRAFFIC, explained to me in graphic detail exactly what was going to happen to Scooter if he slipped his leash, explained to me in no uncertain terms that I was training Scooter to walk on the highway and that he'd prefer that I walked there by myself instead of with the dog, emphasized that there would be HELL TO PAY if he caught me down there with my back toward traffic or without the vest, and turned me loose with a, "Well, s**t, BeeBee, you're almost eighteen. Try not to blister your ass too bad. It'd break my heart if I lost you."

I'm sure other parents cringe and shake their heads at the parenting practices of Saint Alan of Aspergia.

Thank whatever gods watch over teenage girls with undiagnosed Asperger's that I was raised by Saint Alan of Aspergia, way out in the boonies where no one cared.

As for the article itself, a couple of thoughts.

First, it is important to remember that this was a response to a different article. Without reading A first, it is difficult to judge how appropriate reaction B might be.

Second, everyone has a different idea about what it is appropriate to express. For me, to vent like that publicly, it just wouldn't happen. Even if I felt it. I get all the extreme feelings out much more privately, and come into any public setting with a measured response. Hopefully, anyway; occasionally someone can push my buttons and get a more extreme response I do worry about things getting back to my children, and I don't want them to someday cringe at my words (not that they don't cringe already - I have teenagers, now, lol). I don't want my son to know much more than sure, it was hard at times, but I did my best for him because I love him; he shouldn't be privy to every thought I ever had or every vent I ever made. But not everyone feels the same way, and that is just the world we live in.

The mom did express much I could relate to, but for me the negative feelings were always fleeting. They got dealt with and put into a proper place so that I could go back to doing the work I was supposed to be doing. I suspect it is the same with the mother who wrote the article. As was pointed out, she does include statements that show she does understand her unique child, so the negative feelings can't be controlling her life. They were just something she felt the need to express, to relieve herself of. I get that, even if I would never have felt the need or desire to do it the way she did. Vents aren't reality; they are a fleeting need to release tension, and we move past them. Or, at least, we should.

So ... I don't know. We're in an information overload world, which can be positive (no matter how you are feeling, you can find some writing to relate to) and negative (the flip side being that people who should never see those feelings now often will, too).

Sure, everyone can have a bad day. I've had lots of them. I've felt like running away. I've felt like sending my kids to go live somewhere else. I've been frustrated to the point of crying. I've been sad to the point of crying over the challenges, particularly my oldest faced when he was a little boy. I don't think I've ever like I was a victim of my child though.

And maybe this mom was just having a bad week, but there are hundreds of articles out there with the same woe is me tone, and try reading some of the comments to not just this mom article, but also the follow up article by an Aspie. The Aspie adult was basically told she was a horrid, selfish drain on society who should never ever be allowed to speak in public, while the mom was held up for sainthood for putting up the monstrous child. One comment even endorsed euthanasia of the boy and all like him, and that all mom's putting up with defective children like that should get to have the victim role at all points in time--the comment received favorable responses from other parents of Aspies and Auties.

These are the bits with the tone that really got to me and what I was thinking as I was reading them:
"He can be playing so nicely with a child one minute, then hit or pinch them or scream in their face the next." (I've never seen a special needs child that didn't give warning signals if you listen to their body language, facial expressions, or just the situation. This is where it does suck that we have to be like a hawk ready to intervene and redirect, but how often when you really think about the situation from your child's POV and your past experiences with them has lashing out really come out of nowhere?)

"“Strong-willed?” Fine, you take him for an hour." (We've probably all felt like this, especially in the face of some busy body telling us how easy they can deal with our child, but it's just purely the tone that makes me read it as I don't like my child and neither will you, because it wasn't written next to the lines about busybodies. Maybe I'm totally wrong and that is what it was supposed to refer to, but that's how it struck me)

"“Not able to follow the rules?” His anxiety has turned him into a defiant little control freak who wants to set them himself, then make everyone else — including other kids, and even us — follow them." (phrasing it so that she called him a defiant little control freak is the key part of that one to me. Mine also is an extreme scripter).

"“Stress?” What all of the above collectively does to my husband and me can’t possibly be expressed by those six letters." "My depressing weight gain, some 40 pounds or more (I eat as a way to cope.) The deep mourning for the loss of the child we thought we would have, watching longingly as other parents play with their “regular” kids."
"There’s also the isolation. I’m a very social person and before my son developed his “bad reputation,” I worked hard to cultivate friends in the building. But then the play dates and birthday party invitations dried up. It’s a terrible thing to be ostracized."
"Going to the store or a restaurant usually involves some sort of disaster — I’ve had to chase him around and around the aisles of our fancy market after he snatched a candy bar, then drag him to the sidewalk for a time out — and our mess is on display for all to see. "
"And there is the toll on our marriage. I brought in a healthy paycheck for many years but as I’ve become my son’s caregiver, my career has been put on the backburner. This has thrust my husband into the stressful, unexpected role of breadwinner. For the first time, we fight about money. We have been at odds over our son’s issues and, given our different parenting styles, how best to deal with them. And he takes so much of my time and energy, there’s not much left over for me, let alone my husband. Somehow, we’re hanging in there, through the unimaginably worst of times."

(While I agree that it can be very stressful, it's just like a lot of blame for the parents not coping very well is being placed on this child. There comes a time when you can choose to continue to wallow or deal with what you've got, and as long as you're wallowing you're going to resent the heck out of your "defective" child. I know it's a process and everyone has the right to work their way through it, but it seems like moving on is not happening and who takes the brunt of that? The little boy. Maybe the article tone should be "I am so stressed out, there needs to be better support for parents who aren't coping well" instead of "My life is a nightmare because of my child's behaviors." Like the difference in an I statement versus a you statement in an argument. I don't disagree that the mom has a very real problem, one she didn't sign up for, and that wasn't about something that she did, but it would be nice to see a tone of 'I need help. I need to learn to cope.' versus the one I perceive in the article of 'this child is ruining my life. He made me lonely. He made me embarrassed to be in public. He made me fat. He made my marriage relationship not do well')

Re-reading it, yes there were things in there that weren't so negative of the child and just sounded like an overwhelmed mom: "The shrieking does subside, back into sobs, and that part is somehow harder to watch, reminding me how terrifying it must be to feel to be that out of control, especially when you’re a small, anxious child."
"There are stares and glares of a holier-than-thou world at large, as judgmental strangers, neighbors and, worst of all, family members have clearly labeled my “misbehaving” child a “bad” boy and me a terrible parent. (No, thank you, he doesn’t need “a good spanking.”)"
"I was never a yeller, so I’m not proud of myself when I lose it. I know I’m supposed to be the in-control adult and my son’s role model. I know I’m more effective when I’m calm but forceful and that yelling only makes him worse. But he pushes long and hard. These days when I rage, he’ll sometimes ask, “Mommy, why are you so angry?” That makes me feel truly terrible."
"As much as I might understand why parents would want to steer clear of us, my son has been doing much better lately, and there have been long stretches when I’ve felt very lonely for both of us, and very bitter."
"Lately, he’s repeating a commercial catch phrase he’s heard on the radio ad infinitum."
"Anxiety is a key component of Asperger’s, and because our little boy’s brain works differently from most people’s, the world is a confusing and scary place for him"

And there is this one that just seemed kind of weird to me:"To stave off the anxiety, he perseverates – repeating behaviors over and over again. Imagine trying to go on a quick errand with a child who, starting from toddlerhood, has worked through a repertoire of perseverations: wanting to touch every car, then every door, then every pay phone."
It makes me think: Why can there never be a a few extra minutes in the day to touch the cars? Is it that she thinks someone is going to freak out at them if a toddler touches the bumper? Is it that it takes too long? Are they considered too dirty? My son touches every tree as we go past, and won't step on cracks--now that takes some time on a cobblestone path, or even the more common foot square tiles. As I don't work like the mom in the article, I slow down a bit, let him tiptoe through the store. Other family members prefer to drag him along, usually resulting in a meltdown at some point during the outing. I don't then blame him for the meltdown. I know that a little extra time would have prevented it.

Maybe my real problem is that the boy in the article sounds a great deal like my son. My son has done everything that was mentioned in that article, except the one about throwing a glass and almost running through it, although he did once grab his brother's fishing pole by the lure and then run away with it when I told him to put it down--that really was a visit to the ER.

Maybe her child is more violent than mine. Mine doesn't bite all that often, although he does leave bruises when he does. He does meltdown and hit, kick, scream, head butt, throw things, hit himself in the face, and scratch just about everyday sometimes many times a day. He cries loudly and inconsolably pretty much everyday. It took months of social stories and preparation to get him from meltdown when he realized we were driving past the public library to willingly walking into the library and behaving for at least a couple of minutes. His anxiety is so high that sometimes just thinking about leaving the house, even to play in the backyard, is a meltdown worthy challenge. He was asked to not return to preschool over his behaviors, and it's a constant battle to keep him from chasing or hitting my cats.

Reading something that sounds so negative about a child that is very like mine hits a nerve. It's like when I read it, I feel like the article is trying to persuade people that don't know kids like mine that kids very like mine are horrible, that living with them is a marriage wrecking nightmare. Do I think that her feelings are not valid? No, I believe she really feels this way, and that it can be a normal response to a stressful situation, but I do believe that an adult should be able to recognize that their feelings toward their current life with their child are not healthy and that they need to seek some kind of support and help to get past blaming their child for the feelings.

Or maybe she's just venting and playing up the negatives in a hugely public forum, and me being bothered by it is the silly thing.

I don't think you are silly to be bothered by it. When I was in the thick of things, I was bothered by these things more than I am now. I guess I've reached the point of realizing everyone copes with things differently, and the world will keep spinning in spite of it. But back then things like this felt more like interference, something that keeps the job from getting done. I never took kindly to people trying to tell me I was a saint for raising my special needs child so calmly, either; just because our baggage is more visible than everyone else's, doesn't mean that it is any heavier. And, besides, trying to figure out how much baggage weighs comparatively just distracts from the business at hand. I have my jealousy moments, but then I remind myself of my friend's skin cancer scare with her 5 year old. Or the 8 year old that collapsed. There is always "worse," and I don't want anyone's pity - or admiration. Those sorts of things stand in the way of doing the job, in my opinion.

But, my needs and my way are my needs and my way. Other people are different.

I just don't want to ever judge. When life gets hard, we all just do the best we can. And life tends to be hard. For almost everyone. In one way or another. That is life; it is supposed to have challenges. You just tackle them as they come.

And raising children is amazing. For every challenge, there is some rich experience that is ours, as parents, and only ours. We get the gifts, too.

I don't know how to measure any of it against what someone else has, and I think the attempt is a futile exercise. If that mom was posting here, that is the part I would probably address: the sense of jealously and loss. Allow the mourning, then move on. Compensate. Adjust.

It hits a nerve with me too, MiahClone.

It's just that what I hear her railing about being a victim of isn't autism, or an autistic kid, so much as a sugar-coated, whitewashed, judgmental society.

Maybe I'm failing my ToM roll again-- hearing that because that is what I want to get on the Internet and rant and rail about (whether it's the probable ASD 6-year-old boy or the probable NT 4-year-old girl people are staring at while I fight off the ASD Mommy meltdown I want to have so I can 1) find the mushrooms, 2) run across the store for plastic buckets to put the 25-pound sacks of cane sugar and flour in before the dog whizzes on them at home, 3) get through check-out, and 4) get the hell out of WalMart before I start clawing at MY face) every time I have to go out and deal with John Q. Public and it doesn't go perfectly.

But that's what I hear. It's not the kid she hates-- it's the BS. The sugar-coated, whitewashed, welcome-to-wonderful-Holland BS.

Raising a spectrum kid is hard. Scary, frustrating, infuriating, terrifying, crazymaking. In addition to being eye-opening, wonderful, enlightening, transfiguring, elevating, and all that happy wonderful stuff. And in between the crazymaking and the memory making?? A hell of a lot of repetitious, boring drudgery as we repeat instructions, repeat instructions, repeat instructions until even our resident Perseverating Pam starts to feel like a broken record like a broken record like a broken record. I sometimes joke that Aspies make good Mommies because we don't mind drudgery.

Maybe it's just because I'm a spectrum Mommy-- yeah, right. Raising a KID is hard. Scary, frustrating, infuriating, terrifying, crazymaking. In addition to being eye-opening, wonderful, enlightening, transfiguring, elevating, and all that happy wonderful Hallmark stuff. And in between the crazymaking and the memory making?? A hell of a lot of repetitious, boring drudgery as we repeat instructions, repeat instructions, repeat instructions until even our resident Perseverating Pam starts to feel like a broken record like a broken record like a broken record. I first started joking that Aspies make good Mommies because we don't mind drudgery when my first child (decidedly NT) was about 3.

My bi-polar cousin, with her two beautiful, well-dressed NT kids barely more than a year apart (3 and 2, God love her-- if she can get through the next 4 years without letting her fiance talk her into having the Mirena IUD removed, she's home free), also will do just about anything to get out of taking them to the grocery store, because she is also tired of dealing with the stares and the comments.

The main difference between raising the NT kid and raising the ASD kid is, well, everything. Duration, degree, and the diatribe of grim statistics that will befall you if you don't try this medication, implement that therapy, comply with the other expert, and do it all right the first time. NT kid parents have to deal with it too-- books have been written about it. It's just double, triple, quadruple, on steroids, when it's a spectrum kid...

...because it's outside the experience of all those parents who have had to deal with dealing with the Wonderful Typical Kid Schtick, and therefore outside of what they have the ability to relate to, and thus to empathize with ('cause, frankly, it's not just ASD folks who have trouble with Theory of Mind)...

...and I think because a lot of parents of spectrum kids are ALREADY fighting shame and stigma and seeing their kids as somehow "broken." If you're raising a spectrum kid, chances are your skin is a little thinner (or a lot more frequently assaulted) than the average mom, who has plenty of "Oh, wookit the widdle angel!!" moments to fall back on when Precious Snowflake is making a precious prig of himself in the cereal aisle. If you're raising a spectrum kid amid the assault of our Perfect Society, you're ALWAYS on Orange Alert.

That's not the kid's fault. It's not the parent's fault. It's not autism's fault. If anything's to blame, it's a society that seems to think that life should be one long string of Hallmark Moments or else something's, gasp, WRONG.

Saint Alan of Aspergia had his fair share of cows (and meltdowns) in the process of raising me. He never whitewashed jack s**t, or pretended like it was a more wonderful experience than what it was. We always made up after he read me the riot act, and I certainly think about those making-ups while I'm raising my kids-- but more than anything, what I think back on and am intensely grateful for is his unvarnished ASD honesty. Hence I say, RANT AWAY.

Man I loathe that Welcome to Holland poem. I especially hated it right after my oldest was diagnosed with all of his developmental delays. Have you seen the Holland Schmolland version? I haven't read it in a long time, I might not like it now, but I did then.

I think you're probably right, and DW_A_Mom, also right. I think I'm feeling particularly thin-skinned right now after a bad week that wasn't bad on the part of my kids behaviors, they were actually fairly good this week, it was my own bad week.

No. I have not.

I sorta liked the Welcome to Holland thing-- It did a lot for my self-esteem not too long ago when I was looking in the mirror and seeing a hopelessly defective ret*d looking back at me...

...but I bet I'd laugh my fanny off at the parody.

I'll give you my undying gratitude if you'll give me a link.

I went back and re-read them both. I originally found them, like I said, shortly after my oldest was diagnosed with some pretty hefty developmental delays (not autism, didn't get that one until not long ago, but quit pursuing for a few years), and I had been hit with a lot of can'ts and will nevers, along with a (un)healthy dose of probably won'ts and unlikey tos. It was pretty devastating right about then, and the Holland poem really ticked me off, because no, it didn't look like it was going to ever be an equal opportunity just different life. The prognosis I got then was that he'd probably be in self-contained special ed for life and given his particular speech problem that he had an incredibly high risk of having severe dyslexia and not learning to read among other likely academic difficulties. When he started Kindergarten, I had to fight to get him an IEP to keep OT (which he did still need very badly), and he was in a completely regular classroom. Now in 8th grade he's in resource classes--BUT I can see where we are now as being something like the Holland poem. Maybe it should be reserved for people who aren't in the devastated stage. Anyhow, here is the Holland Schmolland thing, more of an essay than a poem.

http://www.autism-help.org/story-holland-schmolland.htm

Yup-- love it. Much more realistic...

...even for those of us who are nominally affected. I've been known to make some very crass comments about "Welcome to Beautiful Holland" on a bad day around here.

Frankly I think people who hand out prognoses full of "can't" and "won't" and "will always" and "will never" ought to be packed off on a garbage scow along with the glad-handers. We'd be better off without the lot.

But then I guess that would leave auties, adders, dys-kids, folks with Downs and CP, the rest of the special-needs kids, and their families.