Broken but still Beautiful

"Oh my darling it's true. Beautiful things have dents and scratches too."

For the most part, my posts are meant to help, to be informative, fun, something you can relate to. This one is no different. While having special needs kids is amazing, often hilarious because of the things they get into, and such a lesson all the time, it's also hard as hell. I'm used to the reactions I get when people find out that both of my kids have ASD, I recite, in my head, the questions they will ask next even before they open their mouths, I've mastered my replies. For years I would simply respond with "Having ASD kids is all I've know, or nah it's not too hard, or they are such a blessing." For some reason, I felt obligated to be reassuring in my responses, upbeat, nonchalant, like I had to ease their concern. I was afraid of looking like a bad mother, or being judged. So I put on a brave face, smiled through the questions, and did my best to convey that I had everything perfectly under control. And honestly, for the most part, my responses were genuine. And hey, who want's to hear about all the hard times anyways right? Except, those days were very real and regardless of how few they were compared to the good days, they broke me, not all of me and nothing that couldn't be repaired, but little by little they would chip away at me. The stress, anxiety, fears of not being enough, the emotional drain...and the more I tried to be better, stronger, more patient, the more I struggled. I was trying so hard to do it all alone, to prove to myself that I was enough. But I wasn't. 

"A child cannot have too many people who love them and want to help them succeed."

Ok, before you start thinking that I'm some depressed chick, let me explain. I wasn't enough, alone, just me, I wasn't enough. You've heard the phrase "It takes a village to raise a child", well in the ASD world, that is SO TRUE! ASD children tend to associate things they learn with where or who they learn them from. So to avoid problems later on, ASD must be able to complete a "mand" or task when asked by anyone for it to be considered fully mastered. Which means I need to rely on others to help teach my children.

 Not to mention their emotional needs, my children see me as their mother, the one they run to when they need comfort, the one who sings them to sleep and checks for monsters under the bed. This is a role I have loved, but we as humans crave more than just love and comfort. My daughter is driven by human interaction, she craves tickles and wrestle time and piggyback rides. But she doesn't crave those things from me. Sure I  was capable of doing them, but I wasn't the person or even the energy she was seeking in those moments. You've seen Liar Liar with Jim Carey...the part where he is chasing his son around the house and tickling him with "the claw". The boy loves this time with his dad, but when the stepdad tries it, he fails miserably! The more I fought to be everything my kids needed, the more I was becoming that step dad with the lame attempt at "the claw". I had to learn that it wasn't a failure on my part, they simply needed more. 

"We all have our own way of speaking and interpreting love, and if you truly love them, you will learn their language and make it your own."

I had to stop seeing it as my failure, stop putting all this stress on myself, stop feeling like I wasn't enough because it wasn't about me, it's about them. I wasn't speaking all of their love languages, so while I thought I was showing them how much I loved them with my actions, the message was getting lost in translation. For them to feel what I was trying to convey, I needed to stop thinking of what I felt and start thinking about how they felt. In trying to do it all alone, I was actually depriving them of the things they needed to feel joy in life, valued, loved. 

Having ASD children is like nothing you can imagine. You learn to drop expectations because the only expectation you want is their happiness. You become adaptable, change the way you think, act, speak. It's incredibly rewarding and incredibly difficult. I become a little better everyday, more patient, loving, stronger...but I can't do it alone. And I don't want to make my kids go through life like that. I need the village and so do they. Because as difficult as it is for me at times, its equally if not more difficult for them.