As always, I want to start this blog by saying that my words are not meant to offend or upset anyone… it’s just one of those times where I have to vent a little bit and this is the perfect outlet for it.
What I am about to talk about is regarding people who say these things to us out of spite. We’ve gotten these comments from people who are trying to help or offer advice, but we’ve also come up against a few people who are meanspirited and downright rude.
So, with that said, there are few things I feel the need to get off my chest. The main one being the fact that a few people keep telling us to get a second opinion. Getting right down to it, why would anyone think that wasn’t the first thing we did. At first, I could easily let it go, but now, I can feel my face getting annoyed when people say it. It mostly comes from people who have no idea about our situation and don’t know our daughter at all. We’ve had Bella evaluated four times. She saw quite a few doctors, specialist and therapists before we got her preliminary diagnoses. So we know what we’re doing. I don’t know if it’s the question, or that the question seems to imply that we aren’t doing what we can for our daughter. I know that sounds a little paranoid, but when people say that, it almost comes off as them implying that we just went with the first thing some random doctor told us. Sometimes it’s easier to just nod and smile and walk away than it is to tell them all that we’ve done in order to get to the point where we are now… and believe it or not, we’re not even that far. We still have to wait in line for the Kirch Center before we can get her final, official diagnoses and all the forms and paperwork we need to get her the additional help she needs. So, not that I have to defend us against strangers, I find myself doing it sometimes. We have been confronted by some people who truly are just mean. Trust me, we do everything we can for our daughter. The first thing we did was get a second opinion (and a third and a fourth). We may be going through most of this blind, since we don’t know everything that can happen, or how to handle everything that happens, but we’re on top of it. We’re doing everything we can for our daughter.
On the same note, people who try to tell us that it’s NOT autism… it’s (insert something else here). She’s just bashful, she’s just shy, she’s just got a bad temper. Maybe she has behavioral problems, maybe she’s just hard headed. All things we’ve been told, by people who clearly don’t know what they’re talking about, trying to tell us that four doctors and us, as her parents, are wrong. Again, I know that it sounds strange, but you can only hear the same things so many times before you start to wonder why people seem to think we don’t know what we’re doing. (I know that might not be what they think, but it’s how it feels sometimes.) These things come from people that have either never met us or our daughter, or people that we haven’t seen in a long time. Like I said, I know that SOME of them mean well, but again, it’s not like we just went with the first diagnoses we were given.
On a lesser note, and not something that I’m complaining about, but there are a lot of people who tell us how strong we are. Truth is, we’re not really. We’re just trying to do our best with what we’ve got. Sometimes, no matter how strong you try to be, things just get to you. You run into people that are going to give you issues no matter what is going on. You deal with people that seem to want to create drama and stress regardless of the situation. Those people are the type that you should just ignore and brush off. However, the things they say can still hurt.
Not to get into a lot of psycho-babble, but while speaking to a psychologist during Bella’s evaluations, she told us that we’d be faced with people, family or otherwise, that could possibly resent us for what is going on. Although she couldn’t explain why this type of thing happens, we’ve experienced it first hand. So have a lot of the parents I’ve spoken to. It’s amazing to think that the presence of a disabled child could illicit negative, adverse and even jealous reactions from people, even family.
We’re not perfect. There will always be people out there who think that we’re being too overprotective, that we’re not doing enough for her, that they know more than we do or that we don’t know what we’re doing. We’ve accepted that things like that may never change, but I guess we can always hope that it will get easier to ignore.
*Sigh*
I apologize if this came off as rude. Sometimes it helps to just vent a little. We’re trying our best and have enough stress going on already, we shouldn’t have to deal with other people purposely trying to create more of it, or random strangers telling us that we don’t know what we’re doing or that we should be doing something else.
We have a lot of people in our lives that WANT to be there, want to help us. They want to be a part of our lives. They support us and understand that this entire situation is a learning experience for us all. So, we try our best to focus on those people. To keep the positive in our lives and do our best to keep the negative from effecting us. Sometimes it gets hard, but that’s why I have this blog, right. So I can vent and get it out of my head and feel a little bit better.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Will Smith. I know, kind of random, but he said something that really hits home with me.
"If you're absent during my struggle, don't expect to be present during my success.”
(On a final note, I just want to say again; Thank You. Thank you for reading and being so supportive. I promise that these ranting blog post will only happen every now and then.)
