I’m “stealing” this story. Totally. It’s a story of a mother and father of a child with a milder disAbility that attends a public school “blended” classroom of students, some of whom have more significant disAbilities and some who are typically developing. One of the student’s disAbility was pretty severe. He chewed on rubber tubing (a common sensory integration technique for children with autism and other sensory issues, which calms, helps process information and prevents the child from chewing on other objects). The child with the chew tube also drooled. Profusely.

The child with the lesser disAbility didn’t want to play with the other said child. That child was “messy.” “Drool-y.” “Slimy,” he told his parents. His parents talked to their son about the other child’s differences and why it was important to embrace him anyway. The class would form a line of children linked by hands when they went to the playground each day. By the end of the year, the student who did not want to hold hands and be friends with the “messy child” was first in line to be his buddy and hold his hand en route to the play yard.

The moral of the story, his father told me, was that being educated alongside students who have disAbilities helps them but also teaches us all. It teaches the children who are typically developing, but it also teaches us — as adults — the power of accepting differences. And really? Children tend to “get it” a whole lot faster than do us old fogies.

The backstory is that these parents cared. They listened to their son’s concerns. They took time to educate and explain why it was important to be kind. They saw the big picture that teaching their child this lesson helped make the world a better place.

We parents of special needs children? We can only hope that there are more mothers and fathers out there with open hearts and the willingness to teach their children to be kind to our differently abled children. We need all the kindness we can get in this big ol’ world which, too often, doesn’t understand the many types of “messiness” that makes up our children’s lives.

Author, speaker and disAbility systemic and arts advocate Leisa A. Hammett is grateful to the mothers and fathers and their children who realized the importance of teaching kindness and being kind to her daughter with autism. Leisa blogs about many of her experiences of raising her soon-to-be 19-year-old daughter at LeisaHammett.com.

Editor’s note: Tomorrow is World Autism Awareness Day. Learn more about autism research and services at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center.

“So, what do you want? A boy or a girl?”

It’s a question often asked of expecting parents. Some mothers and fathers respond with a gender specific answer. Or, often the answer is: “Either. Just so long as s/he is…

healthy.”

But what about those of us who find out that our perfect baby isn’t perfectly healthy?

It happens. Of course. I have an 18-year-old with autism. One  in 88 children are now diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders.

What I learned when I rounded the surprise turn that my family’s journey took when we first heard “The ‘A’ Word,” was that a death had occurred. My daughter was still living–only my expectations of what our life was going to be like had died. I’ve come to realize that although we can make the best of plans, no one knows what the future holds for their lives and those of their children’s.

So, I learned to face down fear, bat away the “What If’s”–the past is dead, the future is not yet born and all we have is right now–and find the joy in what is in this very moment of life. What is, is. That’s a hard concept for many of us to accept in our life journeys. My daughter has autism. It doesn’t go away. But I decided that I was going to live a whole life, as much as possible, while meeting the demands of my daughter’s disAbility. And, I wanted her to have a life that also wasn’t always governed by her label.

That’s meant that I choose to disengage some from the 24/7 demands of parenting. Find sitters or respite programs or friends with whom I can trade off childcare. It means I take care of me by taking a walk around the block, enrolling in an art class, reading a novel, practicing yoga. I believe as mothers, especially, we are the well and the foundation of our families. If we don’t fill that well by taking time for rest, relaxation and adequate sleep, and ditto to secure that foundation of our family, then the well will run dry, the house will cave in.

I chose to surround myself with positive people who looked for the good in this life of extra challenges and were carving paths of cooperation and partnership within the additional systems special needs families must navigate in education and healthcare. Is it easy? Nope. But, I’ve found that searching for the joy, the hope and the blessings–a cup of coffee, the break I got in traffic this morning, a teacher who really cares–buoys my spirit better and helps me make it through this world of dramatic differences.

I have stared fear in the face. And, I won. And you know what? I know you can, too.

Author, speaker and advocate, Leisa A. Hammett, is working on her second book, this one based on her blog: The Journey with Grace: Autism, Art & All the Rest of Life. She speaks about the autism parent journey for the Autism Society of Middle Tennessee at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center every other third Thursday evening beginning in January. Childcare is available for these free Autism Orientations, which are also open to the public.

photo by Bill Bangham

Photo by Bill Bangham

“Don’t you wish they came with instructions?”

From the time you first swaddled your glorious newborn through the ensuing 12 months to come, how many times did you hear that question or some variation accompanied with a shoulder shrug and a side-to-side head nod from some well-meaning adult? If you’re like me, you heard it seemingly more times than you can count.

But you know what? I think our children DO come with instructions! It’s called your intuition. And everyone has it, for some reason especially mothers, biological or cultural.

Pardon my totally unscientific hypothesis here, but I think our intuition is located in our heart. That’s where I feel it. It’s like my heart feels tugged, maybe by those proverbial heart strings. It draws me not to the “right” answer but the answer that is right — or maybe best – for us. In our judgmental mommy culture, we hear a lot about “the right way” and “the wrong way” to parent our children. In the end, as with so many things in our lives, I believe the optimal decisions we make for our families, and for our ourselves, come down to what is best for us at that given moment.

But this thing of listening to that small inner voice, the calling of our heart-based intuition, is sometimes tricky. And sometimes not easy at all. We are bombarded, as you know, by media messages about what we “should” do. Well-meaning neighbors, friends, mothers and grandmothers, everyone it seems has advice for us in raising our sweet ones. But what is the best thing for our own family unit, right now, right here?

I was fortunate to have mothering mentors through friendships, a breastfeeding-support organization and a mother-child playgroup. These mentors knew this wisdom of going within and served me well when my daughter was a babe and also later at a different stage in my mothering. When my daughter was 3, I would be faced with many “right” and “wrong” choices for childhood early intervention, as she’d just been diagnosed with autism.

Now that was hard. Special needs communities, especially the diverse autism culture, can be very vocal and divisive about recommended treatment methodologies. I was accused more than once of actually abusing my child for not choosing a very rigorous therapy that was purported to “cure” autism. It turned out not to be a cure because there is none. I fretted and furrowed my brow, grit my teeth and lost sleep. I cried and agonized and then I pushed on through to do what I knew was best for my child.

And you know what?

It paid off.

She’s happy and she’s gifted at art. No one in my local community was doing art therapy. (Of course, my daughter also did other necessary forms of intervention, such as speech, occupational and educational therapies.) That was just one of many of the choices I made to go our own way or sometimes to follow the most accepted way. My choices have been based on the data I collect about an intervention or parenting situation, combined with what my heart said.

Mother, you are wise. And your heart knows best and will see you through the parenting maze. In the big and in the small, whether your child has challenges or you’re facing the ordinary challenges of living life.

Sssshhh!: Listen.

By author, blogger and speaker Leisa A. Hammett who has navigated the parenting journey with her artist daughter, Grace Goad–much of it traveled as a single mother and 15 years of it with the known diagnosis of her daughter’s “disAbility.”