It’s time to be brutally honest, here. Having a child with special needs and/or delays… is hard.
Not every day is full of victories. Some days are full of mom and dad just counting down the hours until bedtime.
Sometimes dealing with your day means letting your child stare at an iPod because it keeps him happy and occupied so you can load the dishwasher, or drink another cup of coffee, or have a grown up conversation with an actual adult.
Sometimes i don’t visit friends because the prospect of packing up my children and getting them organized to go out is too much work, because the idea of having to carry around my 28lb child already makes me exhausted, because having to fight over everything with the older one seems like more trouble than it’s worth. Sometimes you let the children watch tv instead of playing outside because you just want the little one to WALK ALREADY and you’re tired and even though you feel like a terrible parent, you eat chips at salsa at 10 am because it’s generally frowned upon to be wasted when caring for small children and emotional eating is better than emotional drinking at this point.
The worst part is that none of this is their fault. The worst part is that even though you KNOW this, sometimes you feel like it is their fault.
Having kids, in general, is hard. Watching kids who are the same age or younger than Ozzie run around and play and skip and jump and talk and eat french fries and be independent is really hard. A friend of mine also has a child with some special needs… and sometimes she is jealous of the things that Ozzie can do. She reminded me that sometimes it’s okay to cry and to feel like you’re doing a shit-poor job of parenting… as long as it doesn’t last forever.
It’s okay to be sad, or tired, or exhausted. It’s okay to tell someone, they aren’t going to think you’re a terrible person, instead maybe they’ll just think that you are on the brink and need support… and it’s okay for us Special moms to NOT be super heroes all the time.
This is a hard lesson. One i suppose i need right now. Days like today are few and far between, but they are never easy.
update:
Sometimes, i have amazing friends, and they bring me cakes. ❤