Why Do You Care What They Say?

My husband said he doesn’t know why other people’s opinions affect me so much.  And, well, most of the time they don’t.  But when it comes to how people react to a tragedy like the Connecticut shooting, it becomes somewhat personal to me.

You know how after all these tragedies there is some aunt or neighbor who talks to the media and says there was “something off” about the perpetrator?  You know, he didn’t have a lot of friends his age, he had some trouble in school, he was moody, he kept to himself, he was seeing a doctor, he was on medication?  And we all say, “OH….so he was a troubled kid, of course!”

My kid is sweet, sensitive, and smart.  He is friendly and well liked, and possesses a lot of good leadership qualities; he is even the president of his class. He is a great athlete and totally obsessed with baseball.  But he is also the kid in the previous paragraph.

He is the kid who has torn all the pages out of books and scattered them in his room.  He is the kid who has gotten upset at something completely unrelated to me and thrown something at me or punched me.  He is the kid who, when way past the two year old stage, has been carried, crying, screaming, and kicking and hitting me, out of Disney World, on more than one occasion, because he had a meltdown from sensory overload. He is the kid failing in school because he can’t write the answers down on paper.

I am the Mom who loves him to death.  Who sees every wonderful quality he has, and has fought to find out what causes the opposite ones.  I am the mom who sees a kid who is sensitive, and loves people and animals, and doesn’t like to see anyone get hurt, and the one that has come to realize that sometimes has to be treated different than your average kid to make him feel comfortable.

 I’ve spent years and years telling doctors and schools that I think something is wrong and asking for evaluations, and being turned down.  Years of stress dealing with issues no one else would acknowledge.  By chance I have a psychology degree and have worked in community mental health, and am the daughter of a special education teacher with a master’s degree.  Luckily, between the two of us we have a lot of expertise, expertise that has been put to practice, and has made him the kid that is most of the time happy, adjusted, and “normal.”  It was finally this summer, after convincing his pediatrician to make referrals for evaluations I paid for myself, I was able to get a diagnosis (Attention Deficit Disorder, sensory processing issues, probable Dyslexia) and medication.  Medication that makes people say I’m a bad mom for giving it to him, many of the same people blaming Adam Lanza’s mom for Friday’s events.  Medication that helps him focus and handle his frustration and impulses.

From what has been reported, Adam had Asperger’s, a mild form of autism.  He probably had many of the same personality quirks that my son does.  And his mother probably loved him to death and saw her son like I see mine…a sweet kid with some problems.  While that is not an excuse for the events, it is also not a reason to blame the mother.  The mother that was the first person killed.  The mother who I’m sure would not have guns accessible if she had any idea her son might use them on her.

I’m not sure people who do not have a child with special needs really have an idea of what it is to have one.  My son’s are minimal, and it’s hard as heck sometimes, I can’t even imagine the stress of having a child with greater needs.  The notion that people would completely ignore the fact that maybe there sometimes is something wrong that a mother, even the most amazing mothers on earth, can’t fix by themselves really bothers me.  Because if that is not acknowledged, it will never change. 

THAT’s why other people’s opinions on this matter affect me so much.  I want there to be the best possible resources for my son and for other parents like me.  I want people to be ok with the fact that peopIe’s brains are sometimes not wired right.  I want people to understand that if a parent is choosing to give their child medication, they do that after a lot of thought.  I want the stigma to stop keeping people from getting help.  I would never want my child to feel so frustrated that he found killing people and himself to be the way to feel better, and certainly do not want that for anyone else’s child.  I want people to realize that we need to look at WHY someone chooses to do something and not only look at the tools they choose to use.

And in the meantime, that’s why they have wine.