Minibabble: The best thing that ever happened to me

Posted on June 26, 2024June 26, 2024 by suki

The Babblery

Minibabble: The best thing that ever happened to me

00:00 / 9:44

This month’s full episode about raising neuroatypical children is an interview with two mothers whose experiences led me down memory lane. For me, thank goodness, this is a happy lane to wander down. And it made me consider not only how my child has matured and thrived, but also how I came out of the experience changed… for the better.

This episode is a reflection on the full episode, “Take the scaffolding down: Mothering neuroatypical adults.” [Click for transcript]

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Access the full episode at https://babblery.com/2024/06/take-the-scaffolding-down-mothering-neuroatypical-adults/
Access the recording of this episode at https://babblery.com/2024/06/minibabble-the-best-thing-that-ever-happened-to-me/
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[00:00:30] This is your host, Suki Wessling, and this is a Minibabble. Just me talking to you. This month’s full episode is an interview with two mothers whose experiences led me down memory lane. For me, thank goodness, this is a happy lane to wander down.

[00:00:45] But for a good number of years when we didn’t know the happy ending to our complex tale, I wasn’t certain it was a lane I would successfully navigate.

[00:00:53] Like one of the women I interviewed, Wendy, I knew pretty early that something was different with one of my two children.

[00:00:59] Initially, it was a difference of intensity. This was the most joyful, ecstatic human being we could imagine having in our household. It was also a child who reacted to confusion, irritation, or other negative emotions in an outsized way. This was clearly a highly intelligent person, but there were certain things they seemed unable to learn.

[00:01:20] Their developmental issues were frustratingly obtuse, not just to us, but to every professional we took them to. My child is now an adult, and I don’t feel the need to rehash all the specifics. But in order to understand what I want to say next, I need to set the stage for what I went through personally.

[00:01:36] My husband and I were quite intentional with the setup of our household. It resembles a traditional home because I was a stay at home mom, but the decision wasn’t made from any conservative inclination. We decided together that, if possible, one of us would be the primary caretaker of our children when they were young.

[00:01:53] Certainly, if we had a double Silicon Valley income, we’d been able to afford a nanny, but that wasn’t a lifestyle we aspired to. My work already took place at home and was flexible, and I was eager to give my children a gift that I know a lot of parents would be happy to give if our modern lifestyle allowed it.

[00:02:11] In any case, my plan was to, and there are air quotes around this, get back to my real life once they were in elementary school. But frankly, I had no idea what I was getting into, and that’s probably good. When we’re pregnant, all those wonderful hormones help us forget the pain and bodily destruction that pregnancy and birth can bring.

[00:02:31] A healthy, wanted pregnancy also offers an unbelievable feeling of joyful hope. I was not in general an optimistic person at that time, but both of my pregnancies were full of a hormone induced, starry eyed optimism that I look back on with fondness. Babies are as complex as any humans, however, and although in modern times, more often than not, we get a healthy baby that grows into a healthy child and a functional adult, sometimes life takes a different path.

[00:03:00] My memory lane, therefore, starts with that starry eyed optimism, but it doesn’t immediately dive into a dark pit of despair. As I said, our child was an amazing human being whom we adored. I have so many wonderful memories, such as the baby space program, a reference I’m putting in here just for those in the know.

[00:03:19] The neuroatypical mothering full episode contains plenty of experiences similar to ours. The short version is that we started to get signs that all was not typical with our child’s development. I learned to flinch at hearing the words, I just need to check in with you about today from preschool teachers. When I sought the help of a family therapist, someone who had worked in the public schools, she issued a warning starker than I expected. If you enroll this child in public school, they’ll be put in special education, which will be devastating for them.

[00:03:54] It wasn’t until kindergarten, however, that I completely realized that my plan to get back to my real life was not going to happen. This child had taken what was my actual real life into their hands and led me in a new, unexpected direction. After three months of kindergarten, I became what I like to call the world’s most reluctant homeschooler.

[00:04:15] You can access many years of my mommy blog, Avant Parenting, if you want the details, but I want to focus on what this turn of events did for me. It turned me into a whole new person, a person I liked better, a person I respected more, and a person who is glad that there’s no do over. At the time, however, we didn’t have it easy.

[00:04:36] I engaged in what we might call extreme parenting, starting during the toddler years and extending for perhaps another 9 to 13 years, depending on what you count as extreme. I feel like we got a really good handle on things around their 10th year, but I expect that many parents would look at what we went through subsequent to that as still quite unusual, until the last couple years of high school when everything evened out.

[00:05:00] But it doesn’t matter to me, because I credit my child and the struggle to raise them for who I am today. And as some wise person told me long ago, if you regret something in the past, then you regret who you are today. Do you really want to regret who you are? In my case, no. It’s true that parenting changed the trajectory of my career. I never got back to my real life as I planned because my real life completely changed.

[00:05:31] So this is the place I start from when I hear a young woman focus on potential difficulties when considering motherhood. I fear that it may be impossible for a young woman to understand that despite all of our complaints, very few moms of adult children live in regret about having kids because to do that is to regret actual human beings that we created and or nurtured.

[00:05:53] It’s also to regret the growth that moms experience through these challenges, the different, stronger people we become. There are women who regret, of course, for a variety of reasons. But focusing on the few negatives amongst a wonderful sea of satisfaction makes no sense. That’s like the people who say I’m crazy to swim in Monterey Bay because of the very few shark attacks that have taken place over many, many years. The joy of the swim is totally worth that risk.

[00:06:21] The joy of motherhood is pretty much worth any risk. Any woman who chooses not to mother, or who, for whatever reason, ends up not being a mother, can live a wonderful, fulfilling life. That’s for sure. There is nothing wrong with choosing not to mother. Biology is not destiny.

[00:06:39] That said, there is no substitute or equal for the experience of nurturing another human life, which is an act unlike any other. It changes us fundamentally, some of us so much, that when we look back, we hardly recognize the person we were. And that I feel I must say again, is a good thing, the best thing that ever happened to me.

[00:07:02] Thanks to Rebecca and Wendy for sharing their experiences that made me reflect on my own child rearing years. And thanks to the contemporary Australian composer named Dorothea Baker, whose beautiful music graced this episode.