Bringing Nat to parties is one of those things that has never been easy. When he was little, he would do unsafe things like try to drink from others’ discarded glasses and he once licked all the salt off the chips and put them all back in the bowl.<\/p>\n
Now, he is perfectly kind and happy. The problem, of course, is me, and The Others (not as in Lost,<\/span> but as in The Rest of The World Especially Those Who Don’t Know…). When Nat is perfectly kind and happy, he is very, very active. He goes into one of his circuits, flapping, talking to himself, from one room to the next, in a pattern, and sometimes bumps into people. Without saying, “Excuse me,” of course. Like so many things, I have tried and tried over the years to prompt him when to say that (after bumping or burping), but he never does it on his own.<\/p>\n The Others notice. I notice them noticing. I wince. How is it that after all these years I have thin skin and wrong priorities? Why do I feel like I’ve failed because his behavior is not perfect? I think it’s because I was raised to try to be as good as possible. To be perfect, perhaps. Diseased to please. So, even though I think Nat is being as good as he can be, given his social deficits, it is still not good enough. And people look. I look at their faces and watch for the puzzlement. Nothing rude happens; it is just this puzzlement. These are friends, or friends of friends. They may even know about Nat, but they didn’t really<\/span> know. They now know. They feel the disability. And they see his limitations, and my inability to fix it. I hate that I still feel that way sometimes. I hate that there is this drive to fix everything, to be perfect. That makes me so sad.<\/p>\n Okay, reality check. Parents get ashamed of their kids sometimes, right? How many times have I cringed when Ben walks out of a friend’s house, letting the door slam in the face of the mom who is saying, “Thanks for coming over, Ben! Bye!” Maybe I get sad because I want to be able to go to a party and just have it be an easy show-off of my kids, but I am too small-minded to be able to feel show-off-y about Nat sometimes. I try so hard to see all of his progress and virtues, and I tell everyone who asks, rattling off everything from how well he transitioned to The House to his four jobs to his helpfulness and ease with everyone. So good, so good. So much to thank God for.<\/p>\n But — not good enough? I think it is, but then again, is anything?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bringing Nat to parties is one of those things that has never been easy. When he was little, he would do unsafe things like try to drink from others’ discarded glasses and he once licked all the salt off the chips and put them all back in the bowl. Now, he is perfectly kind and […]<\/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-65","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-13","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","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=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
“Ben! Say thanks! Say goodbye!”
“Bye,” comes the muffled voice from within the depths of the red hooded sweatshirt.<\/p>\n