April 27, 2010 - LAY IT ON THE LINE

Yesterday morning started with me freaking out and in tears. I even wrote my ex-husband an email railing at him for not coming on board with my daughter's Asperger's. He sends gifts at holidays and a check every month, but other than that, he's checked out. That's a different story and not one that I want to discuss right now, though parental alienation would be a good topic for a later post. What I want to talk about in this post is why I was freaking out.

Yesterday my daughter and I laid it all on the line. A couple of weeks ago she had an incident with a girl that threw her for a loop. I discussed this in an earlier blog. At that time, because I didn't know what else to do - I asked her if she'd like for me to speak to some of the students at her school to help them understand Asperger's and the role that it plays on communication and social skills. We had always taken the approach that no one other than teachers and administrators needed to know, so I was hugely surprised when she said yes - that if it would help people understand her and be nice to her, she wanted me to talk to her class. I spoke with the principal and she agreed that it would be a good idea to speak with the 7th grade class, so she arranged to have the kids broken up into two groups during first period which is a "free period". Also, my daughter doesn't attend first period, so I could give the presentation without her being there. My daughter and I also agreed that I would give the presentation on Asperger's and a bit on the autism spectrum in general terms without mentioning her by name - but if kids asked me specific questions, I was allowed to answer them as they relate to her.

So all of this sounds relatively easy right - I mean, I can rattle off facts about Asperger's from the top of my head. The problem started when I started doubting the kids who would be listening to me. What could I say? And did I want them to know that my child has a disability? And most importantly, would the presentation have the opposite effect from what we intended? Would kids start making fun of my daughter because of her differences? On top of this, I spoke to a mother of a set of twins with Asperger's a couple of days before my presentation - wrong move! She scared the bejeezus out of me. I felt completely defeated and incompetent after that conversation.

After berating my ex-husband and doing a bit of meditation, I felt much better. What I realized was that each parent's experience is different because their child - and as a result, their needs - are different. I'm also reading the book Living on the Spectrum which has a section on speaking with your child's classmates. I found this after I'd agreed to do the presentation, so I was really happy to read about success stories and strategies of other presentations. I tried to put all of this into perspective and remember that advocacy on my daughter's behalf could only help her, and possibly other children with differences.

The two things that I wanted to get across, even more than understanding of Asperger's and autism spectrum was COMPASSION and TOLERANCE. So, I gave them a few statistics about autism and Asperger's and then spoke to them about the anxiety that individuals with Asperger's feel related to social situations and how their interactions with individuals with differences were hugely consequential to those individuals. I'm very happy to report that most of the kids were extremely interested in what I had to say, they asked a few questions and one girl informed the group that her father has Asperger's. My daughter also reported that more of her classmates took the time to just say hi. There were not seismic shifts, but she does seem hopeful. Whew! Sometimes you just have to lay it all out and take a chance that others will receive what you have to say.

Remember - DIFFERENT IS BEAUTIFUL!!