{"id":210,"date":"2009-04-21T07:25:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-21T07:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2009\/04\/beyond-compare\/"},"modified":"2009-04-21T07:25:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-21T07:25:00","slug":"beyond-compare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/beyond-compare\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Compare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don’t know just what I wanted, but I know, I wanted more. <\/span>
–Carly Simon<\/span><\/p>\n

In Dr. Suess’s story Yertle the Turtle,<\/span> the main character Yertle just keeps getting turtles to pile up on top of one another so that he can be the highest and the best all around. Turtle after turtle is crushingly laid on top of one another so that Yertle can reach to the sky, but still he is not satisfied.<\/p>\n

Perhaps these thoughts are coming up now that I can see with aching clarity just how different Max’s trajectory is from Nat’s. Comparing children. Comparing scenarios. Someone wins and someone loses. There is a painful dynamic that occurs sometimes when I’m talking to very young mothers, whereby I am assuring them that their little child is fine or appears only mildly on the spectrum, or will be fine, or something like that. I was trying to explain this to my mother yesterday while we were driving back from her gym (I had driven down to Connecticut with Max and Hannah to begin our college visits. Can you imagine this is happening to a child of mine?? Do you know what I mean?). <\/p>\n

Even Mom, who really can grasp every new concept I introduce, within just a beginning word or two, could not quite see what I meant at first. Of course she knew <\/span>what I meant, but she did not think that I was interpreting the dynamic correctly. She thought that most people were saying, in admiration, that I did a lot for Nat given the paucity of resources 19 or 16 years ago. Or given the lack of support. She was probably right, but that is not what I was talking about.<\/p>\n

What I’m talking about is a text that runs beneath that, which carries the implication that you would never, of course<\/span>, want your child to be like Nat.<\/p>\n

They don’t mean to imply that, at least not consciously. But they are hoping for a different kind of child, a different outlook, a different set of challenges, than what someone like Nat presents.
There is nothing wrong with that! I know that! Autism is difficult, painful to deal with, sometimes impossible. We hate to see our children struggle! We hate to struggle. Yes, yes, yes.<\/p>\n

But what happens is, I end up feeling<\/span> like Nat is being seen as somehow inferior because basically he is the feared outcome. It seems almost taken for granted that Nat is the undesirable.<\/p>\n

In the same breath, people comment on how “great Nat is doing! since last time!” and “how wonderful he is!” and I wonder which is the greater truth: that Nat is someone to admire or that Nat is someone to fear?<\/p>\n

I am not naive. I understand that the two exist together at once. They do for me, as well. My heart will still sometimes hurt when I look at Nat and see the life he does not get to have — especially now that Max is considering which colleges he wants to attend. I cannot help comparing, just like the young mothers. Maybe it hurts when they talk to me about this because they are showing me something that is still true inside of me, that exists right alongside of all my love and pride about Nat. For as great as Nat’s life is, as hopeful as I am about his future, sometimes, I still want more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don’t know just what I wanted, but I know, I wanted more. –Carly Simon In Dr. Suess’s story Yertle the Turtle, the main character Yertle just keeps getting turtles to pile up on top of one another so that he can be the highest and the best all around. Turtle after turtle is crushingly laid […]<\/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-210","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-3o","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","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=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}