It's enough to make you want to run and hide and to be honest for many parents its just what we do (or at least want to do). Maybe even our way of coping! Out of crippling fear that we might mess things up even more or make the situation worse, we choose to let the other parent do it, they know what they are doing anyway!
But who is then left to help our child? To understand this moment that is new for us all? Who is left to help the child who isn't coping? In a situation we may have seen all to often, but now our ideas have run out?
"I don't know what I am doing" is not an option that many of us have, as we are the one's left standing...we are the ones that just have to do it!
So I take a soulful breath, I close my eyes and think. Embrace that moment of mental silence that helps me take the leap into my child's world while still holding on to the logical world that is mine. Hoping that something I am about to try may work (even just slightly). I am the one who's mind is open to trying something new, maybe I even see failure as being one step closer to the solution. For these irrational and unexplainable moments I need to be his calm and logic. It's time to put my needs and comfort aside and literally role with the punches (headbutts, bites and all). To be there for OUR child who is fighting for control in an out of control and intensified world...I don't know what I am doing, but I have to try!
One thing that I have learned as a parent, especially an Autistic parent...Parenting is not about you or me, it's not about what makes you feel better or what makes me look better to others. It is about being in that hardest of times with your child, putting your own frustrations and emotions aside and being motivated purely by the needs of your child. You need to come from a place that wants to help your child, it's not about you making a mistake or me saying the wrong thing, it's about you trying to get through with some hope that we can work this out and to not take it personally as a parent when it doesn't. Holding onto hope that everything will be OK.
Walking away is the easy way, making excuses and saying "but I don't know" is easy! When our child was diagnosed with Autism, you're right...I DON"T KNOW WHAT I"M DOING either!! But I don't have the option to not figure it out. So go and hide in your delusion that just because I am the mom I know what I am doing, that it comes naturally to me, its something I'm born with, I am the mom...whatever!
But know that when ever you do take that leap, no matter what the outcome, if it doesn't work, you stumble to find words, or something works. When you say "I don't know what I am doing, but I'm going to try anyway!" Know that I am looking at you as my hero, who was brave enough to enter this crazy moment, to try and save his family.
