Learning to Grieve Pre made Definitions about our Children

Many people and even other mother's don't understand when I say to them  I had to grieve my child when I received the diagnose of Autism. I've been from a long period of pain and soul searching and with help I could understand more. Today I see that this process would have been easier if someone had told me that as a parent we have to try not to have pre conceived ideas of what our child will be or what we want them to be. My son didn't die but what need to be grieved was the child I created in my mind and things I imposed in my head about what he was going to be or do or believe.

I think that is what parents that have a constant struggle and suffering suffer with, they can't really obtain the happiness despite the condition of their child or they can't stop blaming someone, something or themselves.

I wanted someone to have told me that as parents we can have dreams about everything of course, we can dream for our child and build and work hard for it. But we can't impose our dream to reality or we can't be angry just because things didn't work the way we thought, I wanted someone have told me just to accept and live life and feel blessed with the life I was given to take care, enjoy the moment and whatever happens to him we will figure this out or we will work hard and accept and move forward with what makes our child happy but not about our self centered parenthood happy.

It's not about just when your child has a disability is not just about or preparing ourselves to the worse. Even in the course of our children's life we keep wanting to impose or make our children follow the path we think is correct, the person they should date, what university we dream them to attend, their religion, what sex they are going to be attracted to. It's about everything !

But when we see our children has some kind of mild disability,  can be just  a simple speech problem, then we deny, pretend and ignore, sometimes we don't act fast enough because we keep with the illusion that will get better because we want to hold on to the idea we made in our head of what our child should be.

That's  the lesson when Autism strikes  we have to remember: that is not ABOUT US, WHAT WE WANT WHAT WE WISH WHAT WE WANTED IT TO BE. It's about what it is and see from now on what attitude we are going to have it's about accepting and moving on.

Moving on..

Jana