Friday, July 15, 2011
Rewarding? in all honesty....REALLY?
I was reading a blog post from a friend of a friend who is a part time step mom to a severely autistic child. She refers to her life as "mother" of said autistic child as "rewarding". Though I can say that I have learned a lot from my daughter who is blind and autistic I cannot claim to feel rewarded. It is hard to feel rewarded when my day consists of non-stop raging fits triggered by ANYTHING and everything, seeing her injure herself (she bites herself), watching her spin herself in circles until she pukes or praying that today isn't one of those days where she uses her own poo as a paintbrush! All of the moms of autistic kids I know look like they are half a second from pulling their hair out most of the time. But like I said, I have been taught a thing or two, I have been taught patience 10 fold, taught never to take a hug or smile for granted and that I should STAY ALERT to the contents of pull ups. Hearing someone go on and on about "rewards" makes me wonder what they are doing that they never have to deal with any of the things I or all of the other mom's I know have to deal with. At the same time, I feel a little insulted that she sums being an autistic mom up to only the good things which with an autistic child really are few and far between (about 25% of the day). Where is she the other 75% of the time? If you are going to claim to be a real "autistic mom" you shouldn't sugar coat it, we moms need to stick together and give GOOD information, not misleading information. No...rewarding isn't the description I would use to describe my life as an Autistic mom. Stressful, frustrating, thankful that it isn't worse and that my child is one of the "smilers" is more like it. But honestly, I don't feel rewarded about having an Autistic child in particular though I do feel rewarded to have a child in general! In fact, I feel MORE than rewarded by that, I feel down right blessed but I feel the same way about my non autistic children as well. Then again, I never hear her bragging about her other stepchild, I guess having one of the "normal" ones is a little boring to her exciting autistic momdom!
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