Dumb Things People Say to Special Needs Parents

What you said: Your faith will get you through! Or, God doesn’t bring us to it unless he plans to bring us through it! Or, With God all things are possible!

What we heard: You’re only having trouble because your faith is crappy and weak.

Here’s the deal: my faith did get me through, or rather, God did. I was more broken by the time Carter had his second birthday than I have ever revealed publicly, and I spent long, wakeful nights in the manner that is familiar to millions of people of faith: on my knees, the holy book of my tradition open in front of me, begging God for relief for me and my family and healing for my child. I told God that if we couldn’t have relief and healing, that I would very much like a carbon monoxide leak to take us all quietly in our sleep, and if that could be arranged while Jacob and Abbie were at their dad’s and Spencer was with his mom, then that would be infinitely preferable.

I am 90% convinced that if the house we lived in at that time had a garage, I wouldn’t be writing this to you now. The presence of God in the universe doesn’t let people of faith off the hook and platitudes like this don’t help anyone except the person who says them. Glib sayings about faith are all well and good when life is swell and the sun is shining. People who are suffering need something more substantial. If you are a person of faith, we need you to live that faith by caring for us and hearing how we’re struggling.

What you asked: Did you take medicine while you were pregnant?

What we heard: How did you cause this?

This was a question someone asked me while Carter was a toddler, screaming and fretting through his second year of life. What I know now is, when people ask me questions designed to figure out how I caused Carter’s various disabilities and issues, they are really saying, this would never happen to me. And while I want to reassure you that it probably won’t happen to you, it could. Yes, you. You, who give money to charity and always wear your seatbelt and feed your family organic foods and are a very nice person who never kicked a puppy. I know that it is very, very painful to live in a world of uncertainty and fear because I live on a cliff every minute, but there are no guarantees in this life. We don’t have (will never have) answers to questions like why this childWhy our family? There are no answers to those questions, or at least none to which we have access during this lifetime.

There are dozens of variations of this question, all of them probing for a cause, seeking to lay blame on the feet of that traditional whipping post, dear old mom. When he was a baby, my friends who practiced natural and attachment parenting thought I wasn’t doing natural and attachment parenting hard enough (A baby whose needs are met won’t cry! Pfffffffft. Suck it, Dr. Sears.). My friends who practiced more conventional parenting thought I was spoiling Carter by nursing and carrying him so much. No matter which way I turned, someone assumed it was my fault, as if I wasn’t already trapped in a giant web of self-doubt and recrimination. I tried to give him away to foster care (Thank God Brian stopped me because I really do love that kid.) because I was sure he needed a better mother.

As he got older, people gave me books about discipline and my father-in-law offered to take Carter for two weeks to make him shape up. Do not succumb to this temptation. Ordinary, fallible parents do not cause serious disabilities in their children. We have not traumatized them into their problems by being human. Resist the impulse to make assumptions about a child’s parents based on that child’s behavior.

The world is uncertain and sometimes horrible, even here in middle class America where the grocery stores overflow with food and the roads are paved and talk radio churns its way ever forward. Crappy things happen to perfectly ordinary people, and most of the time there is no one and nothing to blame. It’s lousy and it feels horribly unfair; nevertheless, it’s the truth.


Adrienne Jones
Adrienne Jones
Adrienne Jones lives with her family in Albuquerque, NM. She is a regular contributor at Brain, Child Magazine and Glade Run Lutheran Services. She blogs (infrequently, but with feeling) at No Points for Style.

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