Alright so I wrote this back in October and it’s taken me this long to pay it. Why? Honestly, I was afraid of the shit talking backlash I’d get from people. Let’s all just go into this with mutual respect and understanding that we all have our own opinions and plans for childrearing, okay? Sweet. Let’s do this.
There’s this bizarre idea in our culture that children don’t have the right to be considered real people. That they shouldn’t get a say in what happens to them and that they don’t have rights over their bodies. I don’t know where that came from but it is so bizarre to me.
Like… No, my kid does not get a say in what time she goes to bed because for her age and developmental stage that is what is appropriate and what has proven for her to be best for her general well-being during the course of the day. However, even in things where she doesn’t get much of a choice, I still give her as much say in it as possible. I take her feelings and thoughts into consideration.
I let her make decisions where I’m able to because if kids aren’t given the chance to learn how to make good decisions then they never figure out how to, and then they start adulthood out with the expectation that they should be able to do these things because they are adults when nobody ever bothered to teach them how.
For example, my daughter had to change occupational therapists a few months ago from the one that she’d been seeing for many many months. Her new OT is good but my daughter just didn’t take to the change and has been very resistant to the therapies since. So much so that not much therapy gets done. After her last appointment she told me that she didn’t want to do OT anymore and I thought about it and was like, “you know, maybe you’re right. Maybe it is time to take a little bit of a break.”
Taking her thoughts, opinions, and considerations into mind instead of just saying, “no this is what’s good for you you’re going to do it whether you like it or not” allowed me to see the situation from her perspective. And from the perspective of her desperately frustrated OT.
Bless you, Autumn.
Our kids are people. We are not raising children, we are raising adults, right? We don’t want them to still be children when they go out into the world, we want them to be healthy in mind, emotion, and body as adults. But if we don’t give them those opportunities, then we fail as parents in our ultimate goal: to raise them to be established adults.
I know this has been a bit of a ramble so thanks for sitting through it with me.
Asar, Lord of the Duat, take him into your shining fields.
Anpu, Protector of the Dead, guide him through the winding dark paths and places.
Setekh, Warrior of the Way, protect him as his spirit finds its way.
Nebet-Het, Mother of Mourners, be with us as we grieve.
Aset, Lady of Life, give his spirit breath again into his next life.
Hewet-Her, Comforter of Comforters, hold him fast as he travels into the lands of the West.
Tehuti, Writer of All Wisdom, give me the knowledge and strength to comfort and give guidance to my family in this time of loss.
Today, after a painful battle with a rare form of cancer, we buried my grandfather. I ended up at home alone after the wake and found myself with a terrible problem. No matter what I did or tried, no matter how much I wanted it, I could not make my brain focus on anything. I wasn’t overcome with sadness, nor were constantly shifting thoughts stealing my attention. There was no depression and all I thought about the wake itself was that I hated to leave my grandmother Ruby to go home alone. I didn’t want her to have to go back to an empty house that would never feel like a home again.
National Novel Writing Month was in full swing but the words wouldn’t come. What was wrong with me? Maybe it was the headache that was working itself out. Maybe it was fatigue. Grief? All I had in me was busy just processing the day, trying to let go of all of the hundred conversations and people. The casket, the coffee. The bowl of mints, the director’s nametag and my mother’s tears.
I found myself writing out, instead of my poor NaNo novel, just an unpunctuated, long single stream of thought with no rhyme or reason. Then, my hopes and prayers for my granddaddy as his spirit passes on. It gave me a sense of…peace. Something like happiness but less than joy. Like he was standing there watching the proceedings and seeing how there wasn’t just tears but there were smiles and humor too. Seeing how the family shored together despite differences and even, in some cases, not even knowing one another. There’s support there and there’s love. I could see him there. He’d probably be wearing navy and looking kind of sheepish with his hands in the pockets of his slacks, his watch on and his chin scruff and he’d be smiling because I think he’d be happy with what he saw.
Afterwards, I still felt like I’d been hit by a truck but on the inside, it felt like finding peace.
My grandaddy, Lehman Franks. I will see you again someday. When we walk the Field of Reeds together, our family will be whole once again.
I had been sinking silently beneath the brilliant blue-green waves of a storybook when I was brought sharply back to reality by a pointed order. Disapproval rained down on me from above and embarrassment swirled inside of me with my speeding pulse.
I felt…hot. Too warm and too enclosed. Like my skin was stretched too thin, too tightly around me. My mind felt like a clogged garbage disposal, everything too bright and too loud all ground up inside of me with nowhere to go. Every fiber and texture scratched and tore at me, driving into my brain with every touch. I couldn’t process it all. Everything was coming in all together leaving me drowning in sensation as my mind and body we’re left incapable of tuning out the slightest thing.
Florescent lights above flickered and hummed. I flickered too, coming in and out of myself in pulsing waves.
Out of myself.
Out of myself.
Out.
I wanted out. Out of it all. Out of this room with too many eyes and too much everything. With the scratchy chairs and the incessant flickering. I wanted to run away, screaming for the outside that was quiet, warmth, and open spaces. Open skies and maybe, just maybe, one day I could fly away from the mess of me that it all had made inside.
All I wanted to do was pretend I was somewhere else. To spend as much time as I could pretending to be in this magical, wonderful place where the world was just…different.
A world that was all my own.
Free of all of the noise, complexities, and the constant crush of people all around. My sister at my side gave me a nudge. A silent frown asked, ‘are you okay?’.
A shake of my head.
No. No, I was not at all okay.
My hands were shaking, eyes burning, stomach churning and mind reeling. But most of all? I was…scared. Scared of fucking everything because everything was too much. Everything was too close, too rough on my skin, too bright, and too painful. People’s brushes against me in a crowd were like electric shocks. Sound poured into my ears with all of the gentleness of a tsunami.
There was a tight, hard knot in the back of my throat that was unmoving and defiant.
On the outside, though… On the outside, I had to be…Absolutely. Fucking. Still.
It was as if no one around me could possibly see the storm on my insides if I stayed as still and silent as a statue.
If I didn’t move, they wouldn’t notice I was here.
During moments like this, you know that doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. But its as if your brain only knows fight or flight in that moment. All you can think about is how to escape, whether it’s lashing out at someone to get them to leave you alone or literally bolting from the trigger.
You just want to get out of the public eye as quickly as you can before someone sees the last cognitive functions you possess crumble to nothing. Before they see you break into girl-sized pieces.
You’re a sheer, wet piece of silk wrapped tightly around a mass of brambles and thorns, trying desperately to hold it all in before your skin tears apart.
Meltdowns are terror and confusion and pain and exhaustion all in one. Worst of all, though, is the shame that comes afterward.
The horrified embarrassment.
All of the ‘you’re a grown ass woman, you should be able to handle this!’ or ‘you’re not a child anymore! Act like a fucking adult and calm down!‘. Sometimes even, ‘Why is she even here if she can’t handle a simple interaction?’ or ‘And she wants to be around kids? Should she even be allowed?’
That one always gets me. As if, just because I have different sensitivities or wiring, that I’m somehow incapable of caring for a child. That I have no right to possibly pass on my Autism. That I need someone there to oversee me so I don’t accidentally put the kid in the oven instead of the bassinet or something. Ridiculous.
Children are simple. Understanding. Accepting.
It’s the adults that are the problem.
God forbid we have to leave a place or stop an activity because of a meltdown. The shame is nigh unbearable then. All I want to do after is hide under my blankets alone and cry. Sometimes I would.
The older I get, the easier it is to manage. I suppose that is, in large part, due to the three years of Occupational Therapy, two different anti-depressants (even though they are actually prescribed for nerve pain and gastroparesis), and two different rounds in therapy to help me learn the coping skills I have today.
I don’t work anymore, which I’ve found to be an indescribable blessing that many women aren’t able to claim. I can stay home and sink into my special interests, spend time with my favorite small person, and hide away from the worst of my triggers. Working directly with the public had destroyed my ability to “pass” or to pretend to be neurotypical. It took me the entirety of my pregnancy and then some to get to a point where I was going more than a week without meltdowns or panic attacks.
If you are neurodiverse, retail is not for you. Stay very, very far away.
But, despite it all, I got there. I got there thanks to my amazing medical team. I got there thanks to my phenomenal family and support system.
Now, I’ve finished all of those years in OT, with my wonderful therapist, as well as three stints in physical therapy. I’m as healthy as I can be given my rather poor health and I like to think that I’m thriving.
Yes. I’m thriving.
However, not everyone is. There are so many of us out there.
Women with Autism like me.
Most don’t have the blessings of a partner who’s income allows them to stay home. Many don’t even understand why they’re so different, why doing and being is sometimes so, so hard. It’s getting better, slowly year by year, but it isn’t enough.
For every girl who goes through their lives unaware and so hurt and confused by her own self, that’s a failure. It’s a wrong committed that yearns to be righted. Obviously, we can’t identify and diagnose people. That’s for the doctors. What we can do is to be understanding. If you see someone struggling in a situation, even if you can’t understand why their upset or reacting the way they are, be a friend. Step in if you can.
Choose kindness over reproach.
Helping over commenting.
Affirmation over annoyance.
Acceptance over Awareness.
When you live that way, all the time trying to pass as “normal”. You get so very good at mirroring. Mimicking and blending in, always being on guard to adjut your behavior and mannerisms so that you seem just like everyone else. You create a mask, you change your colors to the same shade as the crowd. Eventually, you realize that you’ve passed so well and for so long that you don’t remember who you are underneath it all. When you try to stop, you realize that you can’t
It can take years and years to dismantle the mask, to find your own brilliant hues and shades again.
Let’s work towards a world where girls and boys, men and women, anyone and everyone, where no one ever has to feel the need to pass again.
Choose patience and compassion. Help us bring the girls lost beneath the masks back into the light. Help bring the lost girls home.
Hello my fellow wanderers, explorers, and Journeyers!
Today is a sort of follow-up to my piece on the amazing book titled The Danish Way of Parenting by Jessica Alexander and Iben Dissing Sandahl. The book centers around the idea that the hidden secret that makes the Danes the happiest people in the world (evaluated by two independent international studies) for the last 40 years almost in a row, actually lies in the way they bring up their children.
As human beings, we tend to stick with what we know and that proves especially true in how we parent. We tend to default to raising our kids the way we were raised. The book address is this first and foremost and gives us the task of “evaluating our default settings”.
However, the rest of the Danish Way of Parenting urges us to stop parenting and start P.A.R.E.N.T.ing. What the hell does that mean? Allow me explain it to you and while I do I’ll give you my P.A.R.E.N.T. Plan so you can have a good example for how to build and frame your own!
That all sounds excellent and wonderful but what does it all mean in practice? Well hang on to your diaper bags and hydroflasks because I am going to walk you through what each of these terms means and then what it looks like in our home. Maybe you can find something in these that you may want to emulate or use for your own household! Let’s begin!
P means to PLAY!
That’s right! Play! That sounds so disastrously simple, doesn’t it? I have news for you then, dear parent. It is!
Get down on the ground, on their level! Meet them as an equal in play! This helps kids to feel more secure. Can you imagine being so small and to have this other human, one who holds so much power over you, just towering over you every time they talk or order or shout? Play should be entirely free of stress or power plays. Get down on their level. If they’re doing a puzzle, sit on the floor and do it too. Coloring at the kids table? Pull up a little kid-sized chair and channel your inner artiste! And you know what? That’s exactly what we do too!
Little Mawell’s favorite things that we do together: *Dollhouse/Toy figure imaginative play *Hide and Seek *Painting or crafting *Digging in the dirt, “excavating for dinosaur bones” as she calls it.
A is all about Authenticity
This point is referring to honesty with our children. Honesty also includes not giving false praise. For example, say that your small child makes you a sculpture that looks less like anything recognizable and more like someone crafted the 3-D bastard lovechild of a Picasso and a Salvador Dalí. Instead of grinning through your teeth and giving an obligatory “It’s a masterpiece! I love it!”, chose an interested “I see you worked really hard on that sculpture! Why don’t you tell me about it?” or “Oh, I see you added in some beads with the clay! That’s a very popular art method called ‘mixed media’!”.
Honesty can be hard with our children. We want to protect them from all things that may make them sad or confused. But it’s being exposed to these things that gives them the chance to learn how to cope with them. Nothing demonstrates this more than explaining a family death to a child. With Little Maxwell, when my grandmother and when a family dog died, we explained to her that when people and animals get old, then it comes their time to die.
Everything has its season. Flowers, weather, toys, even people. Everything breaks down, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t keep those people we love in our lives. We put little clay figures we made and pictures of those we loved up on our pantry-top and give them places with us during holidays. Little Maxwell even tells them about her day sometimes.
R is for REFRAMING.
Reframing is a term that means changing the way you look at a problem or misfortune to see it in a positive light. This can be really easy to do in every part of your life!
*Raining when they wanted to play outside? Have a board game tournament or jump in mud puddles! *Dropped the birthday cake? Salvage what you can and make birthday cake shakes with the ice cream! *Friends can’t come to visit? We can still hang out over a phone call, online, or spend some extra special hygge time with our family instead! *Money was stolen? Then maybe it went to someone who needed it so much more at that time. After all, we are so use to the many blessings we have every day that it’s easy to forget that many people end up driven by desperation just to feed themselves or their families. Try to think of it that way instead, something I’ve done before too!
Going back to that last example, we could all admit that we could use a little more empathy in life. Not just for strangers, but for our own children and loved ones. For ourselves too, perhaps. I know that I’m guilty of getting irritable or tired and then just not giving a damn about anything else until I can get some desperately needed rest or quiet.
When I’m that tired, something that happens a little more often than I will admit, I can be quick to irritation, sickness, pain, and thinking less kindly of others than they deserve. Can you say the same or something similar? Are you in a position that it makes it hard to see the good in the world anymore?
It’s okay. You’re not alone.
It makes us feel…ashamed. Guilty. That’s another emotional stress that presses down on the internal pressures you may already be under. It perpetuates the cycle. The best way to end that cycle?
Empathy.
Have empathy for others and for yourself. Even if you don’t feel that you or they deserve it. After all, empathizing with others isn’t about being deserving or having done something to earn it. It’s about not having earned it at all but being able to give and receive it anyways.
N is for No Ultimatums/Fear-Based Discipline
If you, like me, were raised with a no-nonsense, ‘My-Way-or-the-Highway’, ‘Because-I-Said-So’ approach to parenting, then it’s likely that’s what you started out with while raising your own children. It’s our default setting after all. It’s what we were raised with so it’s how we know to do things. That’s not saying that our parents were abusive or cruel, it’s just that those were also likely their default settings too.
It’s human nature, after all. “Stick to what you know”, as the saying goes. But just because that’s what we know, doesn’t mean that those authoritarian practices are what we HAVE to stick to.
The important thing to do, regardless of your views on spanking or timeouts, is to allow them to be heard and understood. They need to feel that they have a voice in their life and home and that you are willing to listen to them, not just hear them talk.
Choose to find out, to ask them, why they behaved a certain way. You may find out, like me, that your little is so crazy before bed because they are trying to stave off sleep for as long as possible. Why? Because they’ve been having nightmares and are afraid to fall asleep. Instead of spanking or isolating them from you or others for a very real and understandable fear, a good approach would be to spend soe quality snuggle time before they go to sleep. Perhaps a security item or a nightlight or checking under the bed before sleep to put them at ease.
These are simple things that can not only increase your bond with your child but lessen blood pressure, stress, and bedtime battles! I know it does for us because we use these exactly same examples just last night!
Now if I could only find out where she saw a ‘scary policeman’…
I implore you to read this section of the Danish Way of Parenting, even go on the website for more information if anything. I believe that in our American culture, this concept is the hardest for us to incorporate. It is difficult. But isn’t the whole point of it all that giving our kids a better outlook on life, preparing them emotionally and intellectually, is the whole point?
T is for Togetherness!
Tender and loving and comfortable. Togetherness feeds the bond that you share with your entire family, your partners, and your friends. A plant cannot grow without sunlight and a relationship, no matter who it’s with, cannot grow without connection time.
A word used freely in the Danish Way of Parenting, for very good reason, is hygge, pronounced ‘hoo-gah’. Hygge may be an unfamiliar term to many of you but it’s a Danish word that translates loosely into “cozy togetherness with loved ones”.
It’s the feeling you get when it’s a snowy day out and you’re snuggled up on the couch with your sweetie, a warm gooey chocolate chip in hand and a bright glow in your chest. Inspiring. Beautiful. It’s living and loving in the moment, being present with the ones you care for.
The main way you can do this, is by spending time together! No together equals no hygge. Even if you aren’t necessarily doing the same thing, you can still have togetherness.
Boardgames, puzzles, or video games together. Candles lit while you watch a movie with your favorite snuggle buddy. Reading time with your little. Trying to make a new recipe together, the whole family contributing an ingredient one at a time and then tasting it after a cozy dinner all together at the table.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I used the word ‘together’ lately!
So that is the P.A.R.E.N.T. Plan that I’ve been using! I hope that it could bring a few ideas into your own practices with your children. Once again, I would highly, highly suggest reading this book if you haven’t already! It’s my favorite of all of the books I’ve read on parenting, period, and that is making quite the statement! Also don’t forget to drop us a follow and share Little Journeys Everywhere! A follow will let you know when our next post drops so you never have to miss a single post!
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