When you have a child with autism....

So this is a continuation of yesterday's thoughts, mostly because it was *not* a happy homework night in our house last night. It got me thinking about how our lives (I assume) are so different from parents of only "normal" kids. And this applies to parents of girls on the spectrum too.

When you have a child with autism....

1. You live your life as though walking on eggshells, waiting for the phone call or the email that informs you of your child's newest strange behavior at school.

2. You get to play the "homework lottery" every night - the question of whether he brought it all home, whether he will actually work on it, and how miserable will it make the whole household that night before you have to give up and send him to bed.

3. You come to accept the fact that any meeting, church service, family event, or shopping trip may have to be cut short, postponed, or arrived at late while you pull the strings on the family dynamics just to get everyone out the door in a (relatively) calm mood.

4. You find yourself constantly having to explain/apologize/smooth over your child's unpredictable behavior.

5. You notice that in an effort to expose your autistic child to beneficial social activities (requiring extra time management) that yours have dwindled down to nearly nothing.

6. You cheer for every social victory, at the same time wondering what ravages puberty and teenager-hood are going to wreak on your sensitive-but-socially-clueless child.

7. You inwardly cringe whenever he brings up driving/college/marriage/family/career hoping and praying to God that those things will *be* in his future given his propensity for trying to argue his way out of doing anything and his almost complete lack of self-motivating behavior.

8. You constantly wonder if you'll ever know what is actually going on in that brain of his.

9. You wonder, as you watch him get bigger and stronger and deal with his unpredictable temper, whether at some point you will have to give in and take him to the doctor for medication - which you really don't ever want to do given all the horrible side effects.

10. You fear that the next "incident" he has at school will be the last and they'll suspend him and you'll have to home-school him (which is not the ideal situation for anyone).

11. You are constantly apologizing/trying to make it up to his normal sibling(s) wondering all the while what damage the situation is doing to them.

12. You live in constant fear that God forbid something happens to you, who in the family would be willing to raise your children and deal with all their issues?

13. You hope and pray that you can somehow teach your autistic child(ren) to be independent enough that their normal sibling(s) don't have to give up their own dreams to care for them when you're gone.

14. You find yourself alternating between complete fascination and utter disgust when you hear about new research/advances in the causes or treatment of autism, wondering if a useful and affordable one will appear in your child's lifetime.

15. You get frustrated with the fact that if autism was a condition that was actually killing 1 out of every 100 of our nation's children that people would be storming the gates of government demanding a cure.

16. You sometimes think about parents of children with other debilitating illness/conditions and wonder what it would be like to have hope for a cure, or at least the comfort of understanding the cause.

17. You laugh at all the "relationship advice" you hear on TV, etc. telling you to make sure you have "date night" and "self care" and hobbies, all the while praying your autistic child(ren) will sleep long enough for you to actually get a decent night's sleep before you have to get up and do it all again.

18. You wonder if the world-at-large will ever see the brilliance hiding underneath your child's autism.

19. You have some really great days where everything on this list is null and void because your autistic child just made the honor roll (or other achievement).

20. You have some really bad days because everything you tried in order to manage your autistic child's behavior blew up in your face.

Autism certainly gives new meaning to the old Chinese blessing/curse of "May you live in interesting times."