We have a weekly meeting with a Parenting Expert, whom we shall call J. This meeting usually nets her more knowledge than it does me.
Today, however, she asked me a question and even I was surprised at the answer that popped out.
We were talking about Kyle and his antisocial tendencies. Kyle is the friendliest child with severe social deficits that are usually overlooked by the vast majority of people. J asked me how he does with friends. Kyle...has people he knows who are his own age, but his friends are mostly people my age or older. He doesn't invite friends over. He doesn't ask to go over to friends' houses, and he usually won't make any effort to play with others at the park or anything. J asked me how I feel about that. I was...surprised by my response, although it is a true one. It's simply not one I've given much conscious thought to.
I read a post, a while back, in a Facebook support group for parents of children like Kyle. In its essence, the post talked about how we have to learn to accept, as special needs parents, that our children may not be their happiest doing the things we recall doing. What makes them happy may not at all resemble what we had planned for their lives when they were born.
When Kyle was born, I thought his childhood would resemble mine. I had a best friend who practically lived at our house and vice versa. We're still friends to this day. I was prepared for a gaggle of adolescent boys to come running through my house as he got older. I was prepared for overnight guests and for him to be an overnight guest. I was prepared for pizza parties, Cub Scouts, and gaggles of little boys shrieking through my house.
When Kyle was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, I had to accept that a lot of things that I had assumed as a given when I was pregnant with him would not happen the way I thought. As the years have stretched on, I have run into things that I had thought he would do that he cannot or does not do, and I have had to accept, once again, that my vision of his life was not to be.
My house shrieks with the laughter and arguments of little boys, but they are all my little boys. Kyle is in Cub Scouts, because I put him in it, but he is happiest with independent projects.
Kyle has never brought a friend home. The only overnights he's had have been to family members houses or the babysitter's. His closest friends at school are his teachers and the administration staff, who all know him by name and greet him with smiles and high fives.
Part of me, the part that treasures the memories I made with my friends at slumber parties and afternoons spent in each other's homes, mourns for what I can see my son doesn't have. I ache for him to have those memories. I see my friends post photos and stories of their children and their children's friends. I see photos that proudly proclaim "Daughter's First Slumber Party!" and the like, and my heart aches for the experience he doesn't have, and yes, this part of motherhood I have not yet experienced, though I know I likely will with one of my other boys.
The other part of me, the part that knows my son so well, knows that he does not need to have those experiences to have a whole and happy childhood. My expectations do not meet with what my son needs. Kyle needs quiet. He loves building with his Legos on his own. He loves solitary science experiments, and nature walks, and explorations that maybe require Mom's company.
What I wanted and what I thought he would have are nearly the total opposite of what he wants.
In the end, it doesn't matter what I want for his life, or what I expected when I had him. What matters is that he is happy.
And he is.
