This is a letter for all the fathers and mothers who go to the park with your children:
If you see a child who behaves differently from yours, first of all, be silent, do not ask, support, try to help and above all, RESPECT .
Patient of my practice. Mother of a girl with ASD :
- How difficult everything is being! Going to the park, seeing how he yells at the children and how they end up scared while I explain to the mothers that he has a hard time relating to others. They, as always, ask me:
- Not going to save it?
- Yes, I answer with a small voice as I try to contain my daughter.
- Well, how strange that he behaves like this...
Bitter smile. I take my daughter and go home.
I have been a pediatrician for more than fifteen years. Many families have passed through my hands, through my eyes and many of them through my soul: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD), syndromes, rare diseases, chronic diseases, disability, behavioral disorders. They all share the same feeling. Everyone is crying out for something: RESPECT.
This mother doesn't need park advice. It does not need tricks, nor magic.
You don't need inquisitive looks, value judgments, or miscellaneous whispers.
You also don't need patting on the back.
You don't need to hear "oh poor" or "what a shame"
What this mother needs is rest, relief, support and listening...
This mother, like the father, needs us all to make life a little easier for them. Nothing more and nothing less. It's simple: life a little easier.
This mother needs that, looking into her eyes, we repeat:
You're doing it right, you're doing it right, you're doing it right.
This mother needs no one to make her feel guilty, no one ever say again that she has overprotected her daughter, that what she lacks are limits, that if she had raised her differently, she would not be like that.
This mother and father need us to tell them together that they are the best parents their daughter has ever had.
Because mothers like them will never answer you on the slide. They won't tell you about their days, or their nights with a girl with ASD. They will not shed a single tear in front of you, nor will they give you more explanations than are necessary.
Leave it, really, leave it. Shut up. Accompany them from love and respect, never from grief.
And do not forget that no one is free that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or in a few years we will be one of us or perhaps one of our children, those of us who are on the slide gulping...
To all of you, fathers and mothers who go down to the park every afternoon with the sole desire of seeing your children enjoy, I send you a huge hug.
To all the others, I remind you of what I already told you in "The trip of your life" :
“Without realizing it at the beginning of this journey, we drew the map of what our new life will be like, wishing to be perfect parents, with perfect children, leading perfect lives.
However, we forget that life can be dreamed, but never drawn on paper. That life improvises and that no matter how much we have designed the perfect roadmap, life will continue its course... its improvised course.
And in that improvisation, on any given day for many, unforgettable for you, your child is diagnosed with a disease, a syndrome or a disorder. And while the rest of your friends are concerned about what brand of car seat they are going to buy for the car, what school they are going to take him to or whether or not to aim for English because he is still young, what you would like to know is if your son it will have some sequel, if it is going to see how the rest of the children see, if it will be autonomous, if it will feel different over the years, if it will suffer, in short, if it will be able to lead a normal life.
And you start to live, feel and breathe in a parallel world. A world that has another speed, other values and another meaning. A world from which you will no longer be able to leave because the greatest of your life, the best of your life, lives in it"
Source: luciamipediatra
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