You Are Not Alone with your Aspergers Diagnosis

Sharing a journey that other’s travel. You are not alone.

Sometimes I feel as if I put in 110% and get 10% back. All the planning, preparation, presentation. Do you feel the same as I do sometimes, all the time, none of the time? Can you read this and nod your head and finally think you are not alone? Picking one’s self up in the midst of frustration and desperation requires an amazing amount of strength and perseverance. It is much easier to let go, throw your hands up, turn the TV on and never look back. Do you want to give up? Pack up your supplies and put them in the attic? Bury your head and wonder what the path ahead will look like? I do, and YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

“You were given this life because you were strong enough to live it.” – Unknown

This is true. For the both of us, all of us. I believe it. Do you? It may seem ugly at times. I think to myself, I would not have been given the task of raising this child if I were not meant to do it and succeed. By succeeding, I mean conquering days that are over-run with frustration and desperation with the days that strength and perseverance moves us forward. Simply, we are living in one giant Chutes and Ladders game. We need to finish. We don’t start things we don’t intend to finish. We don’t have children that we eventually give up on out of frustration and desperation. We persevere. We stay strong and move on no matter the setbacks (think chutes and ladders here). I don’t think we are waiting for a secret moment to change the course of life, or maybe we are and that is the problem. Instead remember, we are the secret. Our strength and determination are the secret. Are you strong and determined?

“Determination gives you the resolve to keep going in spite of the roadblocks that lay before you.” -Denis Waitley

My son needs my determination, my strength and my persistence. He does not need my frustration, my impatience and my desperation, but needless to say, he gets these more than not each day. Everyday I vow to change that, but we need to meet somewhere in the middle. We just don’t right now. Finding middle-ground, this is what I am hoping his therapy will do for him, but it seems to be a udderly slow process without much visible progress. I continue to put together sensory bins, tray activities, print outs, themed play areas, centers, homemade sensory play materials and everything else you could possibly imagine. He even asks for it. I am pinterested out, and sometimes I think why bother? Why bother using all this time to be rejected? Why bother buying a cool building toy only to have it sit around? Why bother bringing home 20 packing boxes from BJ’s (think garages for trucks, houses for animals) only to have them sit in my livingroom because that is all he sees, boxes (that’s a whole other post soon)? But I AM NOT ALONE. This journey through an aspergers diagnosis is not just me. 

I bother because I am determined and strong. I don’t want to give up on my child. I don’t want him to see me giving up on him. I don’t want to feel like things can’t change; we can’t make progress; and we can’t change our lives for the better. I want to show him strength and determination through frustration and desperation. I want him to learn that good things are worth the bother, even if it feels like you have to walk through cement to get to them. Are you walking through cement right now? I am. If you are, hold your head up high, pull your shoulders back and know YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE.

Pictures capture the best of a moment, good and bad. Your blog can be full of beautiful LOOKING moments but not necessarily any real moments because there is always a bit of happiness in novelty. A fleeting moment of time. Then there is disinterest, tears, pouty faces and the like. That’s ok too because you are still sharing a great idea with your child, with others. It may not have been the best idea for your little guy at the time, but it will be for someone and maybe it will be again for you sometime. You can make the most miserable time look amazing with a few well-timed clicks of the camera. Everyone has these photos and shares these photos. Sometimes they write about the frustration and sometimes they write about the tender moments when the frustrating ones are long forgotten. Sometimes they choose to imagine the frustration doesn’t exist when they write. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

So I wake up each day and set about to follow his lead, encourage new activities or explorations and find a way to create wonder in his world. Wonder is something many parents take for granted; it is just an innate part of childhood. What happens when your child has to learn wonder before they can experience it? How do you create wonder in a world you haven’t quite found a way into. I want him to know that with strength, persistence, and even frustration and desperation, the possibilities out there are endless.

 I AM NOT ALONE. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

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