Can Anyone Define Normal? –The Beginning of a Long Journey

Where to begin?

When you become a parent, your life changes forever. And no matter how ready you think you are, you are not. No one is every ready for the joys, struggles, sickness, memories or up’s and down’s that come along with being a parent. John and I have felt so blessed to have both of our little monkeys. I would not trade them for anything in the world. But becoming a parent also means a lifetime of responsibility and dedication and unconditional love to a little person that thinks you single handedly hung the moon. WOW. That’s a lot of pressure. But with that comes some of the best days of your life and hard decision making to protect them too. With all the runny noses and temper tantrums comes more hugs and kisses than you can count and enough I love you’s to make you feel like just maybe you really are their hero. And although life presents all these amazing times, sometimes life presents us with hard ones too. Which brings me to the entire reason for this post.

After a long debate on whether to just put it all out there I have decided well… to put it all out there. If you know me, you know I am a private person for the most part. I don’t speak about everything that is going on every minute of my life, for a million reasons. And not that it’s changing because it’s not.

BUT.…..HERE. COMES. THE. CHANGE.

I am not looking to gain the sympathy card here, more so I feel like I should share our experience so that if there is anyone out there reading this, maybe they can benefit from our story when it comes to experiences with their own children or anyone they know with children. Here we go.

So this is something that we have been fighting for a long time. The all ending question. Is Jackson “normal”? The answer to that… what the hell is normal? I mean seriously. Does Webster’s even have a definition? John and I have always had a feeling that something was just “off” about Jackson since he was 2 and some of his behaviors were just not progressing the way they should, but weren’t really sure how to handle it or even if there was anything to handle. So starts our questioning.  Is he slow? Does he have delays? Is he speaking like he should? Do you think he could be partially deaf? Why doesn’t he want to play with other kids?  Do you think he has ADHD? Could he be autistic? Do we even know what autistic means? Are we just overthinking it? So what do you do? Let time pass? Then ask…. to be told “He’s just a boy, they take longer to develop, he’ll grow out of it and blah blah blah” Boy if I had a $1 for every time I’ve heard that from multiple sources I’d be a very wealthy person by now. For the next four years- yes I said years people… this is the feedback we have gotten.

And furthermore, not realizing it until recently, I am openly admitting I have been going through the classic stages of coping for those last four years.

First the Denial, no nothing is wrong, I don’t want to believe anything about my perfect little boy is different. Maybe even some denial of not wanting to deal with it if anything is wrong, and somewhat buying into the classic “he will grow out of it” line. That phrase is just like a bad pick up line to me- stupid, pointless and gets you nowhere.

Anger. And lots of it. Why me? Did I do something wrong? Is this all my fault? Could I have done anything different? Am I a bad parent? Why us and our family, why Jackson, anger towards Jackson because I didn’t understand, anger especially towards him being treated differently and bullied at times, anger with healthcare providers, anger towards doctors, doctors and more doctors. Anger at my husband for not feeling like he understands sometimes (even though I know he does). Anger towards myself for feeling like I can’t buy enough patience.  Anger towards other people for not understanding or seeming to even care in some cases. Anger towards him being held back at pre-school because he didn’t want to #2 for them (even though he would do it at home every day,  I mean some kids just like to take care of business at home right?!?) My anger over time towards the situation eventually led me in a different direction.

So bring on the Bargaining. Our first year of 4K . Loved our teacher, everything starts off just great. Then came the “if you will do this, you will get that” routine. Not sure if that was my cry out for him to have good behavior or a secret cry for help because I didn’t know what else to do at the time. Continue the bargaining with making the decision for him to repeat 4K for a second year in hopes that he just needs more time to develop. Keep in mind he has done great academically, it was more for social and communication reasons we decided to hold him back for another year…. BEST DECISION WE EVER MADE. Countless days go by and we are still bargaining, not sure if that will ever not be part of our equation, good thing I'm not striving for perfection huh?

Depression. Whoa….. who has time for that? I would never be depressed about anything. I am way too busy, have too much going on and only crazy people get depressed. I am happy, have a great family, wonderful friends, good home, job, etc. so why would I ever have any reason to think anything is wrong with me, right? WRONG. (kick back in the denial stage here along with the depression) It took me a long time to come to the conclusion that even though all seems ok, it’s really not. Taking a long hard look in the mirror I realized that whatever Jackson is going through is not “normal” and whatever the reason the affect it’s having on me is not the best. So, where do you go with that you ask? Well in my eyes, there were two paths.

Path 1 – continue as we were and hope that “he’ll grow out of it” (there goes that stupid line again)

Path  2 – stop listening to what everyone else is saying and start acting on what I know (insert hard  parental decision making reference here)

What would you do? That’s always an easy question until it really is you that has to answer it. How often we can all answer these questions for our friends and other people, but once you are the one calling the shots, it’s not that easy trust me. So I decided… and Path 2 was my choice. If there is any advice I could ever give any Mom it would be, ALWAYS TRUST WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT YOUR KIDS and FIGHT FOR THEM WITH EVERYTHING YOU HAVE.

And that is what has brought me to the final stage of my coping. Acceptance. Even though it only took 4 YEARS to get to this point, can I just say I am so glad I am here. It’s like God himself just came down and took the bricks off of my shoulders and said, “let me carry those for a while”. And from then on I haven’t looked back. And so starts the journey to figure out what our sweet Jackson is going through and more importantly to help him the best I can. In an effort to have every memory of our experience and journey with Jackson, I have decided to start doing updates on our journey. What is it you ask? Great question. I have been asking that for years.

Our journey has finally started and it’s a long road ahead, but let me tell you something. The day I chose Path 2 was the day that changes my son’s life forever. This picture says it all. My sweet boy, making a thousand wishes from a dandelion with no fear and not a worry in the world.  My next post will begin explaining all about it as we are working on making our own definition of “normal”.

~EM