My kid may be bad, but yours is ugly...

I’m not real good at remembering a lot of details a lot of the time. That’s my disclaimer for the overall lack of information surrounding this next story. Tonight at church we were informed that some lady we don’t know would like to come observe our family.
The conversation started when one of our church members met her somewhere (detail forgotten) and they started talking about something (another one lost). After a while the conversation came around to one of her family members (you guessed it) that has a son (or daughter, or nephew) with autism. The proposed observer was concerned that the parents were using their child’s special needs as an excuse for lax discipline. Our church member began to share her experiences with our family and our boys (which I hope were mostly positive). The woman then asked if she and her forgotten family member could come observe our family to see how we handle our children. I don’t intend any offense, but that seemed like a little bit of an awkward proposition. It did, however, remind me of some of the battles and struggles we’ve had over the years with people who were as well intended as the day is long, but fell just short of the mark.

No one likes to be criticized. Even the most gracious among us struggle when being informed of how poorly we are perceived. As much as we all struggle with criticism, it’s even worse as parents. I think that we all know deep down what an important calling we’ve received as parents and receiving negative feedback on something we feel so strongly about tears us to our very core. I’ve watched parents who were as inattentive as I could ever imagine go on the offensive when confronted about their parenting skills. I’ve watched parents who I admired cower under criticism. The battle is a little deeper for parents with special needs children. There is such a stigma in society concerning families with special needs. It’s not as much of a taboo issue as it used to be, but it is still a sensitive subject. Parents of special needs children, for many reasons, feel that they have a greater burden and responsibility to be the ‘perfect parent’. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, most of us have experienced a thought somewhere in the realm of “they must have done something wrong to have a kid like that.” It’s a disgusting thought but I believe that if we are honest with ourselves we’d acknowledge that we’ve thought something similar. We all know those thoughts exist, so now we feel an extra responsibility to either prove ourselves worthy by performing our parental duties to an exemplary measure or redeem our iniquities by striving for perfection.

There were times when friends or families offered us loving advice or criticism, but it only served to lead Hannah and me to experience our failures more deeply. We know we fail. We know that we fail daily, but we never want to be reminded of that. There are dark days where hope is only found in the ignorant bliss of the illusion that we’re doing the best we can. Sometimes we just want the best we have to be enough, and we know that it isn’t. It never fails that those are the moments when a good Samaritan in the grocery store decides to offer a heartfelt critique of how horribly behaved our children are because they dragged their hands through the produce section while we weren’t looking. Hannah and I have always dealt with those situations a little differently. Hannah often just turns and walks away (she does a good job of following ‘if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.’) I feel like that incredibly generous individual has warranted themselves a little bit of friendly advice in return. I try to, as politely as I can manage, inform them that Andrew and Joel have autism and that comes with sensory issues including being under-sensitive to touch which leads them to put their hands on everything within reach. Fortunately we’ve moved past the phase where Andrew needed to lick everything in order to get a real sensation of what he was encountering. I’ll tell the kind soul that I am grateful that they’re helping me to monitor that type of behavior because we’re working through these issues just like we worked through the self-abuse and lack of all forms of communication.

I’m not saying that you should never criticize a parent with special needs. I know plenty of them who need to have nothing short of a 2x4 upside the head in order to get their head on straight. I am saying that we need to be aware of how vulnerable and defensive they likely are. When you encounter a kid in the grocery store behaving in a manner that would warrant strict and swift discipline in your household, take a moment to consider that you may not know the whole story. Andrew and Joel look as normal as the day is long with their blonde hair and sparkly blues, but there is more at play than meets the eye. If you have a family in your life that has special needs, be sensitive and understand that you cannot possibly understand what they are going through. Even I have had to learn that lesson. Just because I have twins with autism does not mean that I am an expert on all things related to parenting children with special needs. What these families need more than anything is someone to come alongside them and offer to serve in whatever capacity you are capable of providing. If there weren’t family and friends to willingly and selflessly love on our boys, we would not have made the progress we have made so far. We owe a lot of thanks to a lot of people, but I’m not really a detail guy so I’ve forgotten most of them.