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msagaraWhen I started writing these posts well over a year ago, I had two things in mind.
First, I wanted to write about how my ASD son and elementary school. I wanted to talk about how the environment was safe, and the efforts required to make it safe for him. The efforts are not small, and they're not about punishment. If the environment does not feel safe for almost all of the children in it - including those who bully - it frequently fails.
It's vastly easier to make the household a safe environment. It involves far fewer people, and far fewer cultural contexts.
Second, I wanted to write about my own experiences with an ASD child, because I know a lot of people out there are facing some of the same difficulties, and they often feel isolated. By putting these posts up, I wanted to let people know, for a few minutes at a time, that they were not alone.
What I did not expect was that people who don't have - and don't want - children would find them interesting. I did not expect that people who are like my son would find them interesting; that these articles - which are written from my perspective as a parent - would speak to their experiences as someone on the spectrum. As all unexpected gifts, this makes me happy.
However: I want to make a couple of things clear.
Advice about parenting is tricky. In some ways it's like advice about writing. No two children are alike. No two books are alike. The process to raise a child or write a book are both therefore unique. Is there overlap? Yes, because we're all people. We have a lot in common, especially when it comes to our fears and worries.
There is nothing more irritating than the theoretically well-meaning person who walks up to you out of the blue to give you advice on parenting--frequently because you are, in their opinion, doing it wrong. Reading books on parenting isn't the same: that's advice that you've sought out, and the entire experience is between you and the page; you can look for the elements that resonate with your experiences, and you can pick and choose the elements that work for you. It's the same with writing advice: you can pick and choose.
The internet walks a line between these two things: random advice given by strangers, and the advice you seek when you go looking for it.
In the past week, I've seen people beating themselves up because they've come across a few 'how-to-write' advice posts. These posts are great and they have a lot of information in them that's entirely individual - but writers see them and feel deflated. They feel unproductive, or lazy, or incompetent. Which is pretty unhelpful, all round.
In the past several years, I've seen similar - but more intense - reactions to parenting posts and how-tos.
I wanted to make clear, then, that these posts are not meant to be advice in the traditional sense. You are not me, and the things that you will find sensible and comfortable will of course be coming out of your own space and your own experience. They will come out of your house, your work, your extended family and your support network - or your lack of support network.
Which is to say: Your son is not my son and you are not me. The very last thing I want as a take-away from these posts is to make you somehow feel like you're doing it wrong, or that I'm criticizing you. It's hard enough to parent on some days without also beating yourself up; we all have days where we beat ourselves up over things we think, in retrospect, we should have done differently. I don’t want to inadvertently become one of the clubs by which other parents do this to themselves.
Also: if anyone has any questions about anything I've written, ask them here, and I'll try to answer them. If you don't want to ask them with identifiers, ask them anonymously, or ask them in email.
First, I wanted to write about how my ASD son and elementary school. I wanted to talk about how the environment was safe, and the efforts required to make it safe for him. The efforts are not small, and they're not about punishment. If the environment does not feel safe for almost all of the children in it - including those who bully - it frequently fails.
It's vastly easier to make the household a safe environment. It involves far fewer people, and far fewer cultural contexts.
Second, I wanted to write about my own experiences with an ASD child, because I know a lot of people out there are facing some of the same difficulties, and they often feel isolated. By putting these posts up, I wanted to let people know, for a few minutes at a time, that they were not alone.
What I did not expect was that people who don't have - and don't want - children would find them interesting. I did not expect that people who are like my son would find them interesting; that these articles - which are written from my perspective as a parent - would speak to their experiences as someone on the spectrum. As all unexpected gifts, this makes me happy.
However: I want to make a couple of things clear.
Advice about parenting is tricky. In some ways it's like advice about writing. No two children are alike. No two books are alike. The process to raise a child or write a book are both therefore unique. Is there overlap? Yes, because we're all people. We have a lot in common, especially when it comes to our fears and worries.
There is nothing more irritating than the theoretically well-meaning person who walks up to you out of the blue to give you advice on parenting--frequently because you are, in their opinion, doing it wrong. Reading books on parenting isn't the same: that's advice that you've sought out, and the entire experience is between you and the page; you can look for the elements that resonate with your experiences, and you can pick and choose the elements that work for you. It's the same with writing advice: you can pick and choose.
The internet walks a line between these two things: random advice given by strangers, and the advice you seek when you go looking for it.
In the past week, I've seen people beating themselves up because they've come across a few 'how-to-write' advice posts. These posts are great and they have a lot of information in them that's entirely individual - but writers see them and feel deflated. They feel unproductive, or lazy, or incompetent. Which is pretty unhelpful, all round.
In the past several years, I've seen similar - but more intense - reactions to parenting posts and how-tos.
I wanted to make clear, then, that these posts are not meant to be advice in the traditional sense. You are not me, and the things that you will find sensible and comfortable will of course be coming out of your own space and your own experience. They will come out of your house, your work, your extended family and your support network - or your lack of support network.
Which is to say: Your son is not my son and you are not me. The very last thing I want as a take-away from these posts is to make you somehow feel like you're doing it wrong, or that I'm criticizing you. It's hard enough to parent on some days without also beating yourself up; we all have days where we beat ourselves up over things we think, in retrospect, we should have done differently. I don’t want to inadvertently become one of the clubs by which other parents do this to themselves.
Also: if anyone has any questions about anything I've written, ask them here, and I'll try to answer them. If you don't want to ask them with identifiers, ask them anonymously, or ask them in email.
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no subject
Date: 2012-06-08 04:50 am (UTC)I will tell you a possibly funny story about medication and children.
The woman we went to see for our son’s psych assessment was a tiny, ancient woman. Our pediatrician had warned us that many, many parents found her difficult to deal with. We didn’t. She seemed strict and no-nonsense, but she was good with my son. We went for six consecutive weeks.
At the end of this, she told us that she thought we were doing as good a job as we could (which made me happy) and that we should consider Ritalin.
We had not expected this. Ritalin for children under a certain age can be tricky. My son, by this point, had six weeks of school left, and the trial period for Ritalin is eight weeks. Most of the side-effects of the medication lessen over time; anything less than that is not considered conclusive.
So.
I went home. My mother in law was a pharmacist, and she quietly handed my husband two inches worth of reports on Ritalin usage; she of course said nothing critical. My son’s godfather indicated that he would never speak to us again if we tried this.
I have no trouble with medication. My only twitch - and it is that - is the whole informed consent thing. Antibiotics, no. Long term drugs, yes. And of course, he was six. There is no definition of ‘informed consent’ that can be applied to a six year old, imnsho.
So, after a lot of discussion back and forth with teachers and each other, we decided not to do this. Our pediatrican said: “You don’t understand. Dr. Haka sees up to 1500 children a year. They go to her because they’re having trouble and they want her to medicate their children. Maybe in three or four cases a year, she will agree to do this.”
“What does she do all the other times?”
“She tells the parents it’s their fault because they’re doing such a lousy job.”
And...boy did she tell us we were being lousy parents when we decided not to try the Ritalin. She was enraged. She said, “If your child couldn’t see the blackboard, would you decide he didn’t need glasses?” She was beyond furious. I was surprised when she agreed to write the report the school required anyway.
I do not know if we did the right thing. I am aware that there is so much emotional baggage tied up in medication, and that I am not immune to it. My son did cope with school, he did manage - but I often ask myself if he could have done better or if he would have had an easier time.
We did broach the subject with him again when he was older (or rather, he asked about it because of the Order of the Stick's forums). He did consider it for an afternoon, and he decided that he was not - at this point - interested in it, but maybe later.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-08 05:40 am (UTC)Perhaps it would have done something to help your son, perhaps not. But it is your call to make. My pediatrician (who is one of the best doctors I've ever met) sums it up as "quality of life". He won't prescribe ADHD medication unless he's convinced it will improve the child's and family's lives. In that order. But he wouldn't criticize us if we had decided not to try the medication. It is something that can help, but it isn't a "cure". With my children, it helps them concentrate, gives them enough of an attention span to listen and some memory to retain what you've told them. They still retain all the other behaviors that mark ADHD. Those they need to learn to manage themselves or I need to be patient and remember they don't think along the same lines as I do.
On the flipside, these are the only drugs I've ever seen that work immediately. I noticed results within an hour of them first trying it.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-08 05:59 am (UTC)I admit it was slightly shocking, but, well. She did not prescribe as a matter of course; she didn’t prescribe as a matter of convenience, and if she was prescribing, she felt it was necessary. It was clear to us that she felt we were materially harming our son; that we were making his life far more difficult and more miserable than it had to be.
Because I could see the why of her outrage, I didn’t find it offensive, if that makes sense.
My son asked because when he found the Giants in the Playground - a rigidly moderated board - he read everything, and he came across a Ritalin thread. And in it, there were all kinds of horror stories - of children who had been put on Ritalin, but also, one lone furious voice of a young man who had not. He went on Ritalin in his first or second year of college and he had not spoken to his parents after the first month, I think. They had refused to put him on Ritalin, and as a young man he found it made everything easier. He could interact. He could focus. He could think clearly for the first time in his life.
He bitterly resented his parents “religious” adherence to drug-free life because he knew that his entire childhood would have been totally different had he been on Ritalin for most of it. So: he wasn’t speaking to them.
Yes, there were children who were put on Ritalin that found it horrible; they found it personality suppressing and stupefying - but you hear a lot about those things; you seldom hear about the young man who wasn’t.
We did discuss Ritalin again because by this point, the oldest was older, and old enough, IMHO. But he weighed things for himself and decided against.