Bias, subjective, perspective, these are words I tend to use a lot, as well as objective, truth, reality. They are important words for me when I talk about my philosophies about life. To me, one of the hardest things to do in life is live in reality. It sounds like such a simple thing, live in reality, but the reality is, few of us do. We lie to ourselves, convince ourselves it is the truth, and create a whole alternate reality, that we cling to by the thinnest of threads. When something comes along and breaks that thread, our false reality comes crashing down. There is a reason that so many people are on antidepressants and anxiety medicine, it is because we refuse to live in reality, until reality comes knocking on our door. We lie to ourselves about ourselves, about our relationships, about our happiness, about our satisfaction in life, about just about everything. It reminds me about a girl I read about with Aspergers, who spoke about how she fits in at her high school. She says quite often she doesn’t understand why something is funny, but if other people laugh, then she laughs too. At least she knows she is lying to herself, but does it so she fits in. I think we all have done this to some degree. Living in reality is not always very fun, and requires us to be very honest with ourselves, but in the end, the truth will catch up with us if we don’t.
It is even more important to live in reality when you are a parent. Love is a very powerful emotion. It most certainly has the power to blind us. It becomes vitally important for us to fight the blinding affects of love, and see life through eyes untarnished by bias. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing negative about love, love is pure and perfect, it’s us humans that are totally flawed. We are the ones that allow love to put blinders on ourselves, and look past our loved one’s imperfections. However, truth will still come a knocking, even if it is about our loved ones. People who don’t live in reality, constantly sabotage their own lives, and quite often those close to these people are powerless to stop them. Parents who don’t live in reality, sabotage their children’s lives as well as their own. There are so many reasons that make it hard to accept reality when you are a parent. It means we have to accept our own failures, not only as a parent, but our failures as a person. It means having to be the “bad guy” at home, and saying no to things that are not good for our children. It means not taking the easy road to MacDonald's, but rather cooking a meal. It means doing the research, and realizing that what foods we buy, truly make a difference. Most of all, it means seeing our children's imperfections, and not making excuses for them.
Being a parent of an autistic child caries all the same issues as being the parent of a Neuro-typical child, except with the added bonus of guilt. It also has a way of pointing out our flaws. With our neuro-typical children it is easy to say we did fine because they turned out fine. Good ole consequentialism again. We clearly paid the right amount of attention, because our kids are still alive. However, with an autistic child, you can’t get away with that. When we think we are paying the right amount of attention to our children, we turn around and find that they are engaging in fecal spreading. Autistic children have a way of point out our failures as a parent, better than black paint on a car shows dirt. They can find a weakness in our defenses better than the most skilled five star general. Plus they are super intelligent and have incredible attention to detail. I always use the analogy of the velociraptors from the movie Jurassic Park. There is a scene where they talk about how the Velociraptors are attacking the electric fence, but they soon realize they are never attacking the same section of fence twice. They were systematically testing it for weak spots. That is Holden, he systematically tests every aspect of surroundings, looking for a weak spot. If you let your guard down for a second, he will take advantage of it. He will seem completely engaged in something, so you think, “hey I’ll put some laundry to wash, he is engrossed in what he is doing” WRONG. As soon as he notices I have left him alone, all hell breaks loose.
So it is very important that we as parents keep a firm grip on reality. It makes us appear objective and realistic when we attend meetings with our children’s teachers, therapists, and other professionals. By doing that, it gives us credibility, even though we want to throw our arms around a teacher or therapist, and give them the biggest hug of their lives when they see the real child, our child, and not the disability. Like wise, I want his teachers, therapists, and caregivers to trust me with reality. The first person I ever hired as a nanny, I fired after a week. I had my doubts from the beginning, because she kept telling me what I wanted to hear, not the truth. I thought maybe she was just trying to sell herself, in the interview. However when I came home each night after work, and she said everything went great, and Holden was perfect, I knew she wasn’t telling the truth. I knew, because I was realistic about my child, and knew him well enough to know that he always tests new people. Eventually the truth came out, and she was not doing what I asked of her, but rather, doing everything in her power to keep Holden from having a melt down. Even if it meant letting him eat a whole box of cookies in one day. Maybe some parents want to be lied to, and told their children are perfect little angels, but if you tell me my children are perfect little angles, I’ll tell you that you have the worst case of cranial rectitis ever diagnosed.
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