not<\/em> what we are supposed to do — not entirely.\u00a0 Because even as I try to curl up softly and contentedly with what I have, there is all that I still want, and that I am working toward.\u00a0 My children are the best example of what is given, of what I have, but there is no way on earth that I’ll simply let them be exactly who\/what they are.\u00a0 They have to be pushed to try things and grow. \u00a0 We say we love them for who they are, but we also love them for what they could become, if they push themselves.<\/p>\nI’ve always been trying to balance this dynamic, so that I am not pushing them to be something they’re not, thus giving them a bad message about themselves.\u00a0 But — who they are is changeable, improvable!\u00a0 So how do you do it right?\u00a0\u00a0 For example, over the years, I have learned that it is important not to view Nat’s autism as a defect, but rather as a collection of characteristics that are both him and not him.\u00a0 This makes it all the more complicated, trying to get him to grow.\u00a0 He’s like a big beautiful sunny meadow of flowers:\u00a0 but which are the “real” flowers and which are the weeds? If you pull out too much, what will you have left?\u00a0 If you completely replant, haven’t you changed the original essence?<\/p>\n
I have heard virulent ABA-ists talk about stomping out all of the autistic behavior, in order to make the child fit in better.\u00a0 Of course we want him to fit into the world, to find his place, and yet, at what cost?\u00a0 Perhaps his self esteem will suffer, perhaps not.\u00a0 The cost may be something more broad, like a vague pervasive unhappiness and feeling of discontent permeating the family atmosphere.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I envy those autism parents who are just so sure of what is bad about their child, or fixable.\u00a0 They have it all stacked up, solid and immutable.\u00a0 They have a list in their heads of what is what.\u00a0 I have never had that kind of certainty.\u00a0 I have always seen the dreamy spacey qualities in Nat as both things to work on and things to let be.\u00a0 I have sometimes (often) simply been in love with his autistic traits, such as his ability to sing the erratic movement of his wagon, as a little boy.\u00a0 Or his odd verbal formulations that truly express the sentiment, far more than the “correct” usage:\u00a0 “It’s a different, that’s okay.”\u00a0 Or his soft self-talk, wispy whispers of things he needs to say, but also needs you not to hear.\u00a0 How can I explain this to you, you who might say, “I have no right to complain to you because you have it so much tougher with that” that you have every right? I don’t know the depths and darkness of your misery, and you don’t truly know mine.<\/p>\n
There is no way to compare one child to the next, one family to the next.\u00a0 It is all about what it feels like.\u00a0 It feels good to me to have this particular messy garden, where stuff dies one year and inexplicably grows the next.\u00a0 Louis C.K. probably has it right:\u00a0 he just loves his “shitty” body, rather than feeling miserable about the body he just can’t have.\u00a0 The real truth, however, is that it is not a shitty body if it is alive and giving you joy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the second day of battering winds and cold rain on my Cape Cod vacation.\u00a0 You might find yourself saying, “Oh, that is really too bad!\u00a0 Ugly rain on your vacation!\u00a0 You have to be indoors and bored and trying not to eat to console yourself.”\u00a0 Of course, you could also say, “Wow, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-rv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1706,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1705\/revisions\/1706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}