Living left of normal

Having a child with special needs is a difficult job. Some may label it 'impossible'. You lose all sight of normality, or more tortuously you can just see it there sitting on the horizon in your no go zone. Sitting there in the park while you stare at all the children laughing and playing normally while your child stims and fixates on a wheel.slapping you in the face when they're the only child not invited to a birthday party. But I think as parents of children with special needs we start to live a new kind of normal our normal. Where play dates are replaced by therapy where special outings are omitted so you can do more therapy.

I mean who decides what normal is anyway? It just seems like a statistical fallacy. Greater than 50% of the worlds population do X so if your not doing that, you're not normal. Or is it just a manner of perspective? You see all your friends, all your friends children enjoying what we might consider luxuries such as a carefree visit to the shopping centre, a meltdown free visit to the hairdresser and fantasise what it must be like to be them. What it must be like to be normal.

The decision of denying Alex 'normal' 4 year old kinder was an easy yet heartbreaking one for me to make. It came down to a simple equation of no aide time = no mainstream kinder. After last years nappy nightmares I knew with out an aide, he would be once again left to wander the playground for countless hours in soiled nappies or clothes. Of course NT parents all seemed to think I was doing the wrong thing.

The flawed assumption of denying him time to socialize with normal children will only make him less normal. Don't you know by letting him only socialize with Autistic children will only make him more Autistic and he'll only learn more Autistic behaviors? What NT parents don't seem to understand is with our kids, just because monkey sees, it does not equal monkey do.

Our children learn differently. If only it were as simple as force him in to more normal situations he can't comprehend and he will just become normal by some means of social osmosis. If anything, these last 10 months in an Autism exclusive learning environment have made him 'less Autistic' although I do not believe this to be a correct term or description of any sort. Let's just say the gap between normal and my son has shrunk somewhat this year.

I grieve somewhat as this isn't some phase that we can work through and I grieve on my sons behalf. His view of the world and ability to interpret it will always be impaired. I yearn to know what it must be like to parent a normal child. To play without set rules of where the car must be, or where the helicopter must go. To have the freedom of taking your child out for a random outing without fearing the meltdown consequences. To not have to make the choice between time playing at the park, or more therapy. But this our normal, and any different would seem unusual to us.