Parenting the Neurodivergent Child
Parenting the Neurodivergent Child
The Unexpected Child
Last week, I was scrolling through my regular parenting and job-hunting haunts on Facebook, looking for work, and in one group was a post from a mother that stopped my scroll. The post included an image of herself and her three-year-old son. I expect only certain mothers would notice the tiny details in her son’s expression that indicated something was off—something wasn’t quite right. I noticed. In fact, I have a photo from when my son, Sam, was about eight months old, and I remember the same somewhat glazed expression in his eyes. I didn’t see the storm on the horizon in the form of the upheaval that comes with parenting a neurodivergent child.
By the time I was pregnant with our second child, I knew Sam was living in an entirely different world than the one I knew. Considering both photographs and taking each of them in as a whole, the boys looked like a part of any other photograph of any other family. Both faced the camera and smiled. However, a perceptive person might feel uncomfortable and not know why. A mother of an autistic child would notice their eyes indicated they were elsewhere.
Do you remember those Magic Eye prints from years ago? Each picture had another picture hidden in the pattern, and the only way to find it was to allow your eyes to relax and lose focus purposely. That’s the look I saw in both boys. Both connected with something internally so big that it overshadowed most of what happened around them.
“There’s a line from the movie “Out of Africa” that God made the world round so we could not see too far ahead. I think about that a lot.”
Sam wasn’t diagnosed as autistic until he was nearly seven years old (which is a story for another time), but now I see it clear as day. Before my husband and I understood completely, I’d told him that I thought Sam had a polka band playing in his head most of the time, which is kinda funny and kinda not. When you and your child live in this kind of disparity, it’s incredibly lonely as a mom.
The caption beneath the photo on Facebook centered on this. The mom was calling into the Facebook void, asking if she was the only person experiencing this.
While I meant to give her some hope and share what had worked for our family, in retrospect, I don’t think I managed that. There’s a book that nearly every parent reads when their child is newly diagnosed. The author compares having a child with special needs to air travel. Yes, really — air travel. The fable goes like this: imagine you’ve been planning a trip to Italy for months, learning Italian and marking the cities you plan to see on your map. Then, the day finally arrives. You’ve packed your bags and are now flying over the Atlantic Ocean.
During the flight, you’re thinking about Italian food, architecture, art, and gelato, and then you land. As you disembark, you’re told you’ve been on a plane to Iceland rather than Italy. Well, hell. What do you know about Iceland? The language? The weather? The location (I didn’t pay attention in geography class)? Deep breath. You placate yourself by accepting that both countries have unique qualities, good and bad, and even though your whole trip has been turned on its head—hey, you’re flexible. You can adjust.
This is the experience of raising an unexpectedly unique child.
To be completely honest, I toed the line on that one for a long time. I’m sure the author meant well and meant his words to be comforting. However, they were also far from the reality of living the experience.
This brings us back to my response to the young mother on Facebook. I can imagine the journey she’ll most likely take from my experience as a mother who’s raised a young man, now twenty-eight, and my heart breaks for her. The line from the movie “Out of Africa” that consistently rolls around in my brain is that God made the world round so we could not see too far ahead. I think about that a lot. For all intents and purposes, Sam is an incredible success story; he graduated magna cum laude with a double major and has been offered several jobs. But his success has been costly, both to my health and trauma to the rest of our family.
In the end, I offered her my best advice, from joining the Autism Society to hiring aids for respite to scheduling time for herself. I offered recommendations for specific occupational therapy programs and how to get the attention her autistic son will need as he is routed through the school system. I didn’t share the details that are more difficult to accept. I recognize and hope that the world has changed since my son was born over a quarter century ago. The value placed on every human has changed, short of the setback from the Trump administration, which parents will fight again for the next four years. Her son will likely grow up in a different world, with different opportunities and therapies. I wish her only the best.
