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.
I just wonder, if with the appropriate intervention Neurotypical parents can learn to understand their Neurodiverse children better. Maybe help the child to communicate in a more effective way hopefully have the good and loving relationship they should have.
You are picturing my frustration with "intervention", I rarely find neurotypical therapists help me "understand" my autistic son better. I get advices on how to "normalize" him which quite often is surrealistic like replace motor stereotypies by pretending to dance flamenco (I swear I heard that). The "Neurotypical" way of looking at behaviours (autistic or not) can be puzzling, it lacks explanation.. Now when I try to ask deeper things like "could it be he is perceiving time differently than what most of us were trained to perceive? I generally get a "what on earth are you thinking look" with the answer that I should make a more detailed visual agenda to help him cope with changes... Never underestimate the biais from neurotipics who feel huge pressure to fit in and have the natural ability to completely suppress their own way to achieve that.