Every person on this planet has, at sometime in their life, been poked into a pigeon hole.
You're a single parent?
Pigeon holed as (depending on your age) "loose" with the added stigma of "scrounger" if you happen to have to scrape a living on state benefits.
You have blonde hair?
You're stupid then, and we can mock you.
You have red hair?
You are clearly some kind of weird retard and we can mock you and be so grateful that we aren't "ginger". (I hate, loathe and detest the word "ginger", by the way!)
My children would *never* behave like that. Why don't you give her a smack?
You are entirely to blame for your child's behaviour, go beat her.
All of the above apply to both Daisy and I.
Along with many, many others.
But it is the last one that has provoked this entry.
How lucky you are not to have "badly-behaved" children. Are they so well-behaved because they live in fear of being beaten?
Well, I say, LOUD AND PROUD, that I am the lucky one! For I have Daisy. You do not!
If my child was physically disabled you would look at me in a different light. If you looked at me at all, it would probably be with pity tinged with relief. "There but for the Grace of God..." But you look at me with scorn instead, but you know what?? I believe that my Daisy IS physically disabled. Her autism is debilitating. It prevents her doing just as many things in life that a flight of stairs prevents and impedes the progress of a wheelchair user. It renders her physically incapable of doing all sorts of things that other children take for granted. It creates the most excruciating anxiety that mentally cripples her and physically scares her and causes her to engage in "fight or flight". Restrained she will "fight", unrestrained she will run. In exactly the way that a prey animal runs from a predator.
But you look at me, and HAVE to categorize me and Daisy. I am a rubbish mom and she is a brat. Well, good folks....take a second, closer look. I am a mom trying to keep my daughter from debilitating anxiety and she is trying to work with me by focusing on me. It isn't easy and it isn't always successful but if I was that rubbish, why am I constantly reassuring and verbally connecting with Daisy? See? Not only do you see things wrong, but you don't listen either.
I don't regard myself as a bad parent.
I regard myself as a mommy, dealing with a challenging child. A bright, funny, crazy Daisy.
So don't try and poke me into a hole that I neither fit nor belong in.
And I will try not to categorize you as ignorant.....
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9 months ago
Well said, you should be proud to be Daisy's Mummy.
ReplyDeleteWe have also been there and gone from being spoken to at the start of term in the playground to 3 years later being ignored by one and all, see us coming, heads down and scurry past, or the loud, intended to hear comments about discipline and home influences. But do you know what, I wouldnt swap my son for the world, in his short 7 years he has gone through more than most people do in a lifetime and we nearly lost him twice as a baby, so if some behaviour issues are our cross to bear, bring it on, it could be so much worse. I think more people should think like you, once again, well said.