Sunday, January 25, 2009

Now THOSE are good parents!!!!

During the inauguration they showed Obama's sweet little girls sitting nicely with their mom occasionally. A friend of mine on a board that is like family to me said, "Now, THOSE are good parents!" because the girls weren't running wild and screaming and yelling. And at first I didn't think much of it, but it's been sort of gnawing at me. From what I read earlier, the littler one (Sasha? I really need to get their names straight) WAS antsy, and bouncy, and talkative, and fulll of energy, just as you'd expect an excited sweet little girl like her to be. But of course when the camera is on her and she's doing something wild of course the director is not going to say "cut to the family!". No, they'll wait until both girls look their best-behaved and then show them, because that's what good directors do.

Now, going off on a tangent here - I was a photographer for the HS yearbook. I didn't know a helluva lot about photography, because all the other photographers were guys and they didn't seem to like me on their turf. So what I learned, I taught myself. And I took awesome pictures. I went to a catholic HS and the theme of the yearbook was missions, and quite a few of my pictures ended up in the final copy. In showing my mission picture to my sister in law she told me, "Wow! You must have a really nice camera!" No. I have a really good EYE for what would make a good picture. I mean, I've seen people with a super-fancy camera show me piles of crappy vacation pictures they took with it (and I won't mention names as I won't speak ill of the dead). I've also seem some amazing pictures taken with cool, old-fashioned cameras that popped open (one was mine, and it ended up in the yearbook). Nothing fancy. It exposed whatever you were pointing the lens at and clicked - there. You have a picture. Nothing spectacular, but if you had the eye, you could do amazing things with any camera.

It's like telling someone who painted a really nice painting that they must use good-quality oil paints. Or someone who plays the guitar like Eddie Van Halen that he must have a really good guitar.

Raising children is not really an art. You don't carve your child into the perfect child, or mold them out of clay into something wonderful. You start with what you have, and you work from there. And sometimes you find yourself with a wonderfully content, pliable, easily-entertained child who molds well into whatever shape you choose to mold it into. Other times you get the exact opposite: a child who could have decent parents, and no matter how hard you try you cannot mold this child into something resembling a sweet little angel. I don't have an easy, compliant child. Does that mean I have no parenting talent? Does that mean my child is perhaps just in the wrong hands, and in the right hands a "good parent" would mold him to look like all the other sweet little lambs you see cooing happily in the grocery store?

I'm not a bad parent. I'm not a great parent. I'm a parent who gets through her days by the skin of her teeth with a child who works his butt off trying to be good. He really does work hard. We all do - the three of us, our little family. And what for? To be judged by people when we go out with my son and he throws a tantrum or does something else "inappropriate". What a horrible mom (because who really blames the dad?). She can't keep her kid in line. She isn't molding him well. Look what she just let him get away with!! No wonder he acts like that ("choose your battles" the autism specialist tells me, and this means in public too - yes sometimes he does things I choose to ignore in public, because confronting him would mean a HUGE comflict in public)!

So. Stop saying parents with wonderful kids are great parents. Quit saying out of control kids have horrible parents. Yes, there are crappy parents out there. But there are also lots of really easy kids out there and it gets too easy for those parents to pat themselves on the back and point at those of us with less-than-stellar children and throw us all into one category; crappy parents.

And while we're at it - sometimes when you see kids like mine, look very closely and you'd be surprised what you see if you don't make a snap judgement and walk on. You may see a child go up to his mom and give her a big hug and wet kiss. You may see the mom patiently take the same thing out of the cart five times that the kid keeps putting back in. You may see that mom is doing what every other mom out there is doing, but that her child isn't exactly going along with her plans. But you may also see our child see a baby, go up to its stroller, make a face at it, and make it laugh. You may see amazing tenderness if our kid sees someone fall, as they worry if that person is hurt.

This, my friend, is not the product bad parenting. This is Asperger's. The good, the bad, the ugly. Instead of judging, thank your lucky stars you have such perfect kids. As I thank my lucky stars every night for my not-perfect kid. Because what you see is bad behavior and a bad mom. What I see is a child who has amazing potential and who works hard at things other children have come easily to them. And he always amazes me and fills me with wonder and awe.

I challenge you to take my child for however long you think you need to mold him into the perfect child. I challenge anyone. My son refuses to be molded. And that's fine with me. Someday he will be an inventor, a chemist, someone with a brilliant mind that doesn't work like everyone else's. And it will be because I, his crappy mom, did everything in my power to get him what he needs to become that person.

1 comment:

polycotte said...

Say it, sister! Amen!

-- your fellow "bad" mom, Polycotte