In our society, it is easy for people to judge what they don’t understand. If you are the parent of a special needs child, I wanted to tell you that you’re doing a great job. Someone said this to me recently and even though it doesn’t seem like much, it meant so much.
You see, we have four children and our youngest was diagnosed with autism about five years ago. It is interesting to see the world through his eyes. As much as it is interesting, it is equally a lot of work and can be frustrating at times.
In this day and age where many are doing online learning for the start of this school year, we are in the same boat. Internet issues aside, with four zooming at once, this type of learning is not very conducive to families of special needs children.
In his compartmentalized mind, he has difficulty knowing that school is where he learns things and has a teacher, but now we are doing that at home. Home is not where this is supposed to happen so in his mind it isn’t school.
Overwhelming meltdowns and tears are daily occurrences. Frustration and stress is high. Multiple daily breaks to decompress are worked into the schedule because without them nothing would get accomplished.
This is just the season we are in. It won’t be like this forever and in that we have hope. Placing our hope in Jesus is the only way it is possible to get through the day.
There are some things that come with this kind of parenting that last longer than a short season. Some see a child having a meltdown in a store and think it’s the result of bad parenting or spoiled children. This is not normally the case for children with special needs.
When we lived in Florida, our family had annual passes to Disney World. Because it was too difficult to take our youngest for that long of a day of constant waiting, he and I would only attended once in awhile.
Our wait time for most things wasn’t too bad with the special needs pass and we had an overall good day…until the last ride. We had a fast pass, but for whatever reason the wait time was still about twenty minutes.
It was the end of the day and I was holding our young son because if I put him down he would have wandered away and not kept moving in the line. As I was holding him, he reached his limit. We were next in line and handling things as well as possible when a woman behind us was quick to judge—whispering loudly what she would do if he was her child.
She continued to add her two cents even after the ride was over and we were walking out. It was all I could do to not turn around and tell her what we were dealing with because she really didn’t get it. As I prayed in that moment through the tears, I felt the peace of God wash over me—reassuring me it wasn’t worth the fight.
I prayed for the woman that God would open her eyes to the fact that not everyone in this world is the same and that’s okay! We were all created unique with different needs on purpose. God doesn’t make mistakes.
When you are out and about, how do you react to the meltdown of a child—your own or someone else’s?
