Special Needs or Not – We All Have Challenges

Sometimes, I think that parenting is like living with varying degrees of Survivor’s Guilt.  It’s easy to assume that foreign-to-us situations are so different from what we go through daily that we feel guilt over “having it better.”  So often, people feel compelled to qualify comments, both here, and in life, to clarify that they, too, experience xy and z, even though their children are typical. While my son may have more therapy appointments, and I may carry grief over not raising the boy that I’d imagined, we’re more the same than different. 

When it does come to the differences, I, too, am guilty. When reading blogs of friends whose children are more challenged than Tucker is, there are aspects of their lives that I don’t understand first-hand. I don’t know what it’s like to help a teenager bathe and toilet. I have not personally experienced the challenge of helping a child transition from a wheelchair to a bed. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t empathize. It doesn’t mean that I don’t realize that this parenting thing is more the same than it is different.

Because: Love. Pride. Celebrations, tears, and all of the inbetweens.

“I don’t know how you do it” is so often said with well-meaning intent, but really, aren’t all of us already “doing it?” We’ve each stepped up to the life we’ve been given, and deal with our own challenges every day. Some of those challenges are more obvious than others. Some are more hindering, slowing, and yes – bigger.

But realizing that others have more difficult challenges than we do doesn’t mean that our own challenges aren’t real to us. It would be unfair to tell a new mother experiencing crippling anxiety that her challenge is not notable or valid because another mother is physically unable to hold her newborn due to physical limitations.

Our challenges are real because they are ours. The fact that your neighbor, or friend, or an unknown but relatable woman in the news has a more heartbreaking story than yours does not make your story any less heartbreaking, or real, in your home.

My friend Kerri at Undiagnosed But Okay launched an amazing “What’s Your Challenge?” program at her typical daughter’s school.  All of the children were encouraged to write what their personal challenge was. Kerri’s program inspired me. The idea is to raise awareness for special needs with the reminder that each of us has a challenge. When Kerri first told me about this, I thought “Wow. I want to do this at Tucker’s school.” I thought “EVERYBODY needs to do this.” And so I called her, and we talked about an Our Land in which we encourage bloggers and IRL friends to share their challenges.  Kerri will continue this conversation on her blog, and make “What’s Your Challenge?” an amazing new series (awesome, right?).

My friend Katia from I Am The Milk expressed what I’m trying to say really well in a recent comment. She said “You have a way of making me feel like I take on your experience for a brief moment, whenever I read one of your posts. I either see the similarities between your life and parenting experience and mine or feel immersed in your reality.”  The fact that she parents two boys, neither with special needs, and I parent one boy with several developmental delays doesn’t keep us from bonding over the act of parenting. The act of living.

I think it’s also important to say that while Tucker’s language restricts him, it doesn’t have anything to do with the very real issue that Katia’s hair restricts her. That her son’s anxiety restricts their family. My friend Stephanie from Mommy, For Real, addressed this issue perfectly in a recent post of hers. She wrote “Do you ever complain about being a tad overweight? What if while you were griping to a friend about it, she pointed out that there’s a hospitalized woman battling cancer who would be thrilled to be packing ten extra pounds rather than failing to keep any food down. Must we be continually shamed for not keeping things in perspective?”

Special needs or not – we all have challenges. Parenting, and life, are full of worry, love, heartbreak, pride, doubt, joy, and the most incredible sense of worth and import that ever existed.

It’s full of hope and it’s full of promise.

Below is a slide show of people’s real challenges. Be sure to visit Kerri to see her Challenges post today and announcement about her exciting new series!

Very very special thanks to today’s Challenge contributors (in order of appearance so that you may find them):
Tucker and his autism but really his words
Sarah at Amycake and the Dude for worrying and block puzzles
Kate, at Another Bottle of Whine, and being a people pleaser
Allison at Go Dansker Mom, for self-doubt and self-loathing
Allie and son Bear at The Latchkey Mom with coffee and her son’s verbal expression
Jean from All the Everydays with rejecting the busy life
Dana, Kiss my List and her two children with her parallel parking and her kids’ homework and procrastination
Sarah, again at Amycake and the Dude, whose son’s challenge is trying new foods and husband’s is procrastination
Kenya and Christopher from Live, Laugh, Blog where her’s is making new friends and his is lifting monkey bars
Lizzi, the Considerer with the brave face words
Kate, our fearless Listen to Your Mother DC leader and at The Big Piece of Cake with Vulnerability
Katia and her gorgeous and hated hair, from I Am The Milk
My husband for not telling me to go you-know-where
Jen, of My Skewed View, and her worry and anxiety
Kim, of Make Mommy Go Something Something, with her son’s inability to tell ting, or time…
Stephanie, Mommy, For Real, who is highly sensitive
Amanda’s husband and ADHD son from  Everything Special Ed, and the next photo of her own challenge of wishing she saw herself as others do
Kim, again, of Make Mommy Go Something Something, hoping her son feels her love although she’s bipolar
Me lame at the end, trying to forget that measuring milestones and wrinkles are unimportant

What about you? What’s your challenge?
Join us in celebrating our differences and realizing that each of our challenges is important, real, and that we’re more the same than we are different?