There have been many times as a parent when I have felt, I do not have a typical child. I have thought this of both my child, sometimes concurrently. I have also come to realize that in many ways, my children are typical - like their ability to fight like Tasmanian devils followed almost instantaneously by playing happily together. But the reason I write now - at almost 1 am, in a corner of a dark room, is the former.
My child is diagnosed not-typical; autistic; neurodivergent; divergent from the typical neurology. This is a diagnosis that, for the most part, I accept and never hinders my love for them. At the same time, when society, or the people within it, make it clear that my child is not-typical and they are being judged for it, I feel this weight like a heavy yoke. My child does not fit their box, and as a parent, it can be hard (for me) to not feel responsible, not feel I've done wrong, for not forcing my child to fit.
This incident - it doesn't really matter, to be honest. You don't need to know the exact details. We are going through a time of great upheaval, and so my child's autistic traits are more pronounced, more socially and personally impairing. They attempted to connect socially with three other children but did so in a non-normative way and the other children couldn't handle it. They retaliated and they cast my child out, rather violently (from my perspective as a parent, inclined of course to think my child is right and to want them to be loved for who they are). I stepped in when it became clear the incident would keep escalating, hoping to draw my child away from the others and into a more constructive activity. It didn't work, for by then my child was hurting and needing to find resolution - I imagine questions like "What did I do wrong?" and "Can I fix it?" and maybe even "How can I make them hurt like me?" ran through their heads, though probably not as coherently as I wrote it here.
Either way, my child wouldn't stop so one of the others approached me. "Is that your child? Can you make them stop?" And as the other child walked away, they then turned back to me, "Your child is crazy, by the way." If they had been an adult, those would have been fighting words; those words would have been meant solely to hurt. Since they were from a child, I have to believe they weren't intended to hurt; but I also question, what purpose did they serve? There was no way for that to be constructive - either I know and agree or I disagree and will fight you on it. They were hurtful, more even than sticks and stones, but perhaps not in the way one might think.
I never fit the boxes as a child. I remember one friend's mom telling me, "You're not a cookie-cutter kid." No, that I wasn't. It wasn't that I didn't want to be - I did want to fit. But I didn't know how to reshape my brain to think and act like the others. I was lucky and I found one person, my best friend from eight until fourteen, who somehow, somewhy, instinctively let me be me. We were inseparable, and because I had her, it was ok that I didn't fit, most of the time. It was ok for longer than it might otherwise have been, at least. Ultimately, she could not be the balm I needed.
See, I was a 'crazy' child. I had suicidal ideation by the time I was five, maybe even earlier. I had an eating disorder by eight. I was self-harming by ten, attempting suicide by twelve, and institutionalized by fourteen. I received just about every diagnosis I could, and none of them fit; none of them helped. My behavior increasingly spiraled out of control. I imagine my parents felt out of control, too, watching me get ever farther from them, from normal, from society. I don't know if they were ever told when I was young words like I was told today. I do know those words probably came later, or words like them, and that the yoke of responsibility was laid on their shoulders, too, by people with more authority than the child today.
It wasn't that my parents did anything wrong, not in any conventional sense at least. They loved me, I knew that (at least in my right mind; I didn't always feel it, but that wasn't on them). But as I've come to understand neurodiversity and autism, through my children, more and more I've come to identify as autistic. The world was, and is, too much for me and I couldn't, can't, reshape who I am to fit the boxes. It was this feeling, this inability, that repeatedly broke me and led me to break myself. I came out the other side stronger, in some ways, and weaker, in others; more vulnerable but also more aware. I wouldn't be the parent I am, if I had allowed myself to fit the box, if I hadn't broken. Maybe I'd be a better parent - a not-broken one, or just broken in different ways.
Because of my own experience, I have always strived to not attempt to reshape my children; I want them to shape the boxes, to reshape society, not the other way around. This is what I want, when I can think logically. I don't always succeed - there are days, like today, when the heavy weight of responsibility comes bearing down, wrapping me in a seductive blanket and leading me to subconsciously rail against my child's out-of-boxness.
