Plans Change: Making the Most Out of Life

A Special Needs Mom’s Perspective 

A friend recently told me she didn’t know how I did it. I looked at her kind of astonished, not knowing what to say. How do you answer that? How do you simply say, “I just try to survive every single day?”

I wish that I could be her, you know, SUPERMOM. You know the one I’m talking about.  The one with 3.5 kids, 2 dogs, a cat, 4 bedroom home and seemingly has it all put together. But, you know, when my friend told me what she did, it made me realize that, I guess, some people feel that way about me too.

I can honestly say when I started out this whole mom gig 17 years ago I figured I’d have more than one child. But you know as all moms do, they imagine their perfectly groomed children that have no issues and they’re completely well behaved. Let’s face it, that’s not how life really is. Did I for a second think that the hand that I would be dealt would be two special needs children? Two children on the autism spectrum, one of them who still does not communicate. He talks, but the ability to carry on a conversation has not come quite yet.

So I ask again, is this what I pictured for my life, now? No, it wasn’t. But don’t think for a second that I regret the twist and turns my life has taken. My life as a mother, I would like to think, is what some would refer to as a ‘Godwink.’

I was the woman that, as a high schooler, planned to go to a small university in the middle of the woods of Appalachian Tennessee. I planned to study to be a forestry technician, you know a park ranger. Oh, how my life did not go down that path.

Within a year, I was at the local university that has approximately 10,000 students at any given time and I was studying to be a nurse. During that time I became a nursing assistant at a local nursing home. I learned very quickly that I was not cut out to be a nurse. I learned that, although I wanted to help people in some way, that nursing was not the path that I was supposed to go down.

So then what do I do? As I searched for my calling, I stumbled across social work. And there it was, the career I was meant to be doing for the rest of my life. I was meant to take care of children that couldn’t otherwise take care of themselves. That is what I did. I finished my degree. I began working for the state as a child protective service worker. I took trainings that would help me in any way with the children that I worked with. Some of those trainings just so happen to be on autism. Looking back now, never would I have thought that things that I did 10 plus years ago would have helped me in my personal life, but it has in tremendous ways.

I am now the mother of four, 2 boys and 2 girls. One boy and one girl happen to both fall on the Autism Spectrum. When these two sweet souls were little I began noticing things, things that most parents would just kind of brush off as, “they will learn in their own time.” But as a social worker that has been trained in Autism Spectrum Disorders and its symptoms/characteristics, I began noticing things that, for me, raised red flags.

Changing plans

So in the past 7 years I have learned that sometimes your plans have to change. You can’t always do everything that you would like to do or that people on the outside world would expect of you. Today, one of those things happened. It was the day of the beloved school field trip.

The older of my 2 children on the spectrum were able to handle field trips. She was able to handle being around more people and being on the school bus. Unfortunately, our little guy cannot. Some of these things are just too much for him to process. So then I’m faced with the dilemma, what do we do? Do we just skip the field trip and not let him have the experience? Or, do I try and then have him meltdown in front of all the other kids, in front of teachers, in front of the staff of the place we are visiting, and in front of the other parents? Or, do we find some way to a middle ground? Option 3 is where I try to always go.

So, that brings me to today. My son’s class was supposed to take a field trip to a pumpkin patch. I know some parents would see this as trivial, but it’s an experience I would like for him to have. I know I can’t just force him to ride the bus, something he is terrified of. And I cannot force him to handle being around 50 other children and many of their parents which can be extremely overwhelming for him. So instead of putting our sweet boy through undue stress, I opted for an early morning field trip, just mommy and him.

This allowed him to experience everything that his “friends” would be experiencing. He was able to do it in his own time and without the extra stimuli that would most likely have him end his day overwhelmed and mentally exhausted. It also afforded me the opportunity to completely focus on him without distractions or losing him in a sea of preschoolers.

Today I learned that Supermom is what you make of it. Each of us can put someone else up on that pedestal and think that we aren’t good enough. What we must do as mothers is not look outside of our home, but inside. Look at those precious blessings that we have been trusted to take care for. Are they clean? Are they fed? But, most importantly, ARE THEY HAPPY? That is what we should truly be measuring our success as a mother by, not by what others are doing.

We are all SUPERMOM, we just have to look within to see it.

**A special thanks to Huyck Farms in Paducah,  KY for being extremely welcoming and accommodating our special little man.**