Published on 12, July, 2020
I just can't. I wish she wasn't autistic, she is 9 and was diagnosed a couple of months ago. I read some of the posts on here in tears because all you parents are so wonderful...I must be a terrible mother if I can't love her, but she is no good at being a daughter.
I have 3 other children who are all beautiful and neurotypical and don't cause me any trouble, and I look at them with such pride, yet I can't look at my autistic daughter with pride at all. I try and do my best for her but it wears me down, I spend most of my life in tears over her behaviour and I just don't know what to do. Children are meant to bring you joy and she does not bring me joy.
This is ruining my life, my husband wants me to see a doctor and discuss going onto antidepressants or to seek counselling, but neither of those things can change my daughter.
Please tell me I'm not alone in this feeling.
While there's a lot here, if anyone is reading this and feels the same, find someone else who will take your kid - Immediately.
Find another autistic adult who will be MORE than happy to let them stay over. We can be some of the most decent and reliable humans - were actually hired for our innate qualities of trustworthiness and loyalty. Drop everything and find someone who can communicate with and care about and help your kid become their best selves, because I guarantee we absolutely Will Not become everything we're meant to around certain types of NeuroTypical parents. Find a relative who's autistic. It might be your in-laws which you for some reason you "can't put your finger on", despise. Most likely, what you're repelled by is what makes us beautifully and wonderfully Autistic. But it doesn't 'fit in' to what is currently considered 'normal'.
If this post is you, LET. GO. You'll do more harm than good if you have little idea of how they perceive and understand the world. It's far better for everyone to have a distant ideal than a present nightmare.
I read the post above yours Juniper, and that could have been my parents writing that one.
My dad paid me the immense compliment when I was forty after I'd done a nice thing for a disadvantaged looking person that "Until now, I never any any good in you"...
You are very possibly right. I gave my kid the childhood I didn't have, and she is having a much easier time of it, and has quite some control over her life compared to myself at that age..
Most people had trouble with me as a kid but some people didn't. They just seemed to be able to get the best out of me without doing the screaming.