Acceptance

Its weird for me to think about myself as someone who can't face things.  Or who refuses to accept certain truths.  For a while I thought it was hope.  Or optimism.  Its hard to know where those things end and plain denial begins.  I'm learning to accept that JP really is autistic/developmentally delayed.  And he isn't getting better.  In fact, I'd say he is either exactly the same or worse.  Its hard to gauge that though, he has good days and bad days and sometimes bad weeks.  Taking things on the whole and trying to be objective about your child is hard.  You see, I tend to be a cup half full type of person.  And that's a good thing, it really is.  But when you're raising two kids with special needs, you have to be able to acknowledge that the cup is indeed only half full.  That's hard for me.

I have joined groups online for many things.  Whenever I'm interested in something I usually seek out a few groups and join and read and read and read.  Sometimes they end up being total bullshit but other times I learn an awful lot.  I joined a group for parents of autistic children about a year ago. I stayed on it for two weeks and then left.  I wasn't ready to face it or accept it. I went along with therapies, I talked to doctors and his teachers.  I did all the things that I needed to do except this one last thing.  I was grasping onto the tiny possibility that he would magically "get better."  That was in fact just a hyper, typical little boy.  That JP's brain would suddenly snap into place and his neurons would magically function like mine.  Kindergarten changed things.  Not being able to handle the school bus, doing less than 1/3 of the work of classmates, climbing the bookshelves in the library... the list goes on.  And while it may be cute to want to draw smiley faces on all the bus windows, its just not safe and its not allowed.  

So, I joined another group last week.  This one has parents and adults with all forms of autism.  And within 48 hours I actually wrote to the group.  I asked hard questions half believing that I would get hokey answers that only listed chelation, GFCF diets and yoga as ways to deal with a little who is kicking, punching and throwing things at his mother.  I asked a question that no one has ever been able to answer for me:  How do you discipline a child like JP?  How do you know when its his diagnosis causing the problem vs. just a little guy acting up?  I have asked that question to every single professional I've sat across from.  And that's a lot of people.

I got my answer and its simplicity and honesty changed everything.  

He will never be just a little guy acting up.  He is autistic and that means that every single moment of every single day he is fighting to understand his world, his place in it and how to survive it.  He simply cannot press a stop button and be normal.  It will never work that way.  So to expect him to behave like every other child is unfair to him.  It would be like expecting a blind person to see just because its a particularly sunny day.  

Unfair expectations lead to disaster.  Prevention. Preparation.  Those are the keys.  And a book called "Parenting the Explosive Child" was suggested by several people. Ordered it. Twice.  One for us and one for his daycare provider.

That's really hard for me to write even though I am starting to truly believe it.