It is complete insanity. My life is so full that I create a space to share what I think and feel or learn and experience then time passes. They say if you have met one person with autism you have met one person with autism. I believe that if you have experienced one family dealing with special needs you have met one family dealing with special needs. I am a reasonably intelligent person and it has taken me years, I mean years, to learn to balance the demands before me. So, yes, it is insanity, but it is also possible.
I am not special. When I tell people that I am a stay-at-home mom with three children on the spectrum they congratulate me on my ability to persevere. The truth is I am juggling as fast as I can and many things fall by the wayside. The only thing I can consistently claim as true is that I love my children and I would sacrifice most anything for them. When I say “most anything” I do not include sleep, meals, or personal comfort. I manage to grab those things and hold them dear as I am providing for their needs. It presents mostly as self-serving procrastination, not harmful, but not perfect either. There is always something more you could do or a more thorough treatment of a concern that could be made. So, I consider my overarching response to this calling as “flawed.”
As a special needs mom you have to give yourself permission to get it wrong, to have time run away from you, to not have it all together and that is most definitely not the position of an internet blogger. There are algorithms that want to ensure my writing meets standard and systems that dictate what I should do to ensure my work achieves its proper standing in the Google search criteria. I can’t promise you any of that here. I just don’t have time for that. In the last several years since I posted here perfection has become the enemy of the good. I could have been sharing good information, but didn’t post it, because I couldn’t get the post “perfect.”
No longer. I am just going to put it out there and learn as I go, so that those of you who find my experience helpful can learn from my example. It won’t always be a good one, but it will be an honest one. That said, I have just embarked on yet another masters degree program. This time in Applied Behavioral Analysis, so if you have any questions on that topic let me know. I have the ear of some of the best practitioners money can buy on the subject and look forward to digging in.