{"id":3883,"date":"2014-09-05T19:42:25","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T23:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=3883"},"modified":"2014-09-05T20:02:30","modified_gmt":"2014-09-06T00:02:30","slug":"the-heartbreaking-quiet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/the-heartbreaking-quiet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Heartbreaking Quiet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nat comes home every weekend. He is quiet. Sometimes he’s “activated” as his psychopharmacologist says — I hate that. It is such an inhumane way to describe someone. He’s just active. That’s it. Activated — what’s that? It’s referring to how maybe his meds make him? No, his meds are not like that. Besides, he is practically weaned off them.<\/p>\n

Sometimes Nat is not active at all. Sometimes he just moves from one couch to another. I can’t get away from feeling like this is something that should not be. I remember years ago, a behavioral consultant who believed in that ABA bible, “Let Me Hear Your Voice,” told us we needed to scaffold with Nat, and to chain. Lots of construction, building — and also keeping down. The eternal struggle of ABA. We’re supposed to wrestle the autism to the ground, like Secret Service agents.<\/p>\n

So I didn’t do that. Not really. People think I’m such a good mother but I did not do that. I got tired. Depressed. Lost hope. I didn’t consistently practice the ABA. He’s almost 25 for God’s sake and I’m still beating myself up for it. I did not believe it was the way.<\/p>\n

Was I wrong? He is so quiet. If I had believed and converted, would I be hearing his voice more?<\/p>\n

My heart just breaks for him. How is it okay, living such a quiet life?<\/p>\n

I did the best I could, but my best was at times anemic, tired, mediocre. And he suffers for that. He is only as engaged as I make<\/em> him be. That’s what a teacher told me when he was 5. It was all up to me in the end.<\/p>\n

It’s always up to the parents. Even Post-Refrigerator<\/a>. I see that now even with Nat as an adult. It’s up to us.\u00a0 From the start. The parents give birth. The parents try. The parents have to figure out that something’s wrong. The parents have to convince the doctor. The parents have to push the school system. The parents have to deal with their sadness, their incompetence. Everyone’s incompetence. And ignorance.<\/p>\n

Then the evil of the adulthood system starts and there’s even less. Parents come to the rescue again. Parents will tell you what to do. Parents will listen. Parents write the blogs. Parents run the workshops. And write the books. I’m still writing mine, but just so you know. I’m no expert, either. I am just a mom, and not always a good one.<\/p>\n

It’s just we humans and our beautiful, vulnerable children.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nat comes home every weekend. He is quiet. Sometimes he’s “activated” as his psychopharmacologist says — I hate that. It is such an inhumane way to describe someone. He’s just active. That’s it. Activated — what’s that? It’s referring to how maybe his meds make him? No, his meds are not like that. Besides, he […]<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3883","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-10D","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883","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=3883"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3888,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883\/revisions\/3888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}