Recently, my son came home from school\u2026
\nangry.
\nI have been in counseling (for various reasons)
\nand know that anger is just a reaction
\nor response to pain, hurt, and sadness.\u00a0Anger
\nis an emotion I subconsciously went to
\nin the past before realizing that underneath
\nall those outbursts and fits of rage was heartbreak I
\nnever dealt with. We all can agree, dealing with sadness
\nis not the most pleasurable of things one can
\ndo. I was an ostrich with my head in the sand, and I
\ndid ostrich very well. I still catch myself at times suppressing
\nsadness; I can push it down so deep the
\nrabbit hole can\u2019t even touch it. Anger is my cue that
\nI haven\u2019t dealt with my hurt, pain, and violation of
\nboundaries. I am not an expert on how to divert anger,
\nbut I do try and resist the urges when they come
\nup.<\/p>\n
So, when my son entered the car that day, I recognized
\nthat familiar emotion\u2014anger\u2014and I gently
\nasked about his day and why he felt angry. I quickly
\nsaw his eyes water up and his hands begin to move
\naround like crazy; hand movement is a cue that he is
\nreally trying to share something. The hand gestures
\nhelp him to connect the dots, feel, and give him comfort.
\n\u201cBuddy, what\u2019s up?\u201d
\nIn tears, he responded, \u201cI\u2019m just tired of being picked
\non! I don\u2019t want to be different; I want to be at a
\nschool with people who are like me.\u201d
\nOf course, I instantly felt sadness and pain for my son;
\nI had to tell myself, \u201cDon\u2019t go to the angry place Ally\u2014
\nfeel this pain with him.\u201d The mama bear in me wanted
\nto talk (yell) to those kids and give them a little piece
\nof my mind. Maybe I would throw a few dishes for effect\u2026but dishes weren\u2019t around because I was in the
\ncar.<\/p>\n
So maybe I would yell in anger at God\u2026at autism
\nspectrum disorder (ASD)\u2026at life. Yelling and giving a
\npiece of my mind to the youngsters harassing my kid
\nwouldn\u2019t solve anything. After all, those kids are kids\u2026
\nthey are just trying to navigate this \u201ctopsy-turvy\u201d
\nlife like we are.\u00a0 My heart was sad for them, too.<\/p>\n
This anger swelling up in my son was tough to see
\nbecause I knew it came from a place of hurt. He was
\nexperiencing a strong human emotion and he would
\nhave to learn, like me, how to channel the anger and
\ncome to a place of acceptance.\u00a0It makes me want to
\ncry just thinking how he fights daily to keep up with
\nthe Joneses (mainstream) kids both academically
\nand socially.\u00a0When he came into the car angry he had
\na revelation. My little boy recognized he was not like
\nthe \u201cothers.\u201d\u00a0He was able to see the unfairness in his
\n\u201cotherness\u201d label, and he came up with his own solution:
\nbeing with people like himself.\u00a0If I could keep
\nhim in a bubble, I would, but that wouldn\u2019t help him
\nin his adult life. My son, who happens to have a disability,
\nmust come to a place of acceptance of who he
\nis and follow the practice not comparing himself to
\nothers. The hard part is…it could take years to learn…
\nand truthfully, labels persist even into adulthood.<\/p>\n
Comparing oneself to others is an invitation to misery.
\nComparing ourselves to others undermines our
\nimpacts in the world, and it diminishes our abilities to be our individual selves. Comparison of ourselves
\nto others will cause unhappiness. Period. In my son\u2019s
\ncase, I witnessed how the comparison prison can
\ntake root at such an early age when children start
\nseeing how they measure up to unspoken standards
\nand they naturally long for something better or different
\nfor themselves. A person doesn\u2019t really think
\nabout their \u201cotherness\u201d unless they are on the losing
\nside. In one scientific study, young children could detect
\nabnormalities in a peer\u2019s behavior in less than
\nfour minutes. This unspoken measurement indicates
\nthat abnormal behavior is subconsciously known
\nand young children are not often equipped with the
\nmost \u201chumane\u201d response to situations when they are
\naround peers who are unlike the group. When you
\nare a parent of a child who is sent out of the pack because
\nhe\/she is \u201cdifferent,\u201d you carry that pain every
\nday, and you grow in faith that someday they will see
\nthat broken crayons still color perfectly. Further, if
\nyou don\u2019t have a child with a disability, for the love of
\nall that is Holy, please teach your children tolerance!<\/p>\n
After my boy expressed his thoughts, I was instinctively
\nfull of anger for him.
\nOuch! Sting!
\nInstead of going on a rant of shared anger with my
\nson, my mouth knew nothing else but to speak words
\nof life and encouragement over him.<\/p>\n
We are all different,
\nWe are all unique,
\nWe are all crafted by a crafter (creator),
\nWe are all loved.
\n\u201cBuddy, just be yourself, son, because I think \u2018yourself\u2019
\nis pretty darn amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
That pep talk isn\u2019t going to solve all of his problems.
\nIt isn\u2019t going to make his peers miraculously stop bullying
\nhim or suddenly begin to include him in their
\ngames and activities. But my boy, and every person,
\nneeds to hear that they are valuable and loveable,
\nand someday God will send them the right people
\nto be in their lives.<\/p>\n
We can waste our lives by telling ourselves lies like
\n\u201cI\u2019m not valuable because I have weaknesses\u201d (biological,
\nphysical, or mental); \u201cI am not worthy of acceptance
\nbecause I am not the best;\u201d \u201cI am not loveable
\nbecause I struggle.\u201d It is a common thing we do without
\neven knowing it.<\/p>\n
Listening to those lies, though,
\nmeans we believe we are undeserving of happiness,
\nand that is not the truth. The prison of comparison
\noccurs when we believe those crazy lies and then
\nlook at others with envy or desire to possess what
\n\u201cthey\u201d have to get away from our suffering.<\/p>\n
The comparison
\ngame goes on and on like a rollercoaster ride
\nwith continuous loopty-loops. If you struggle with
\nthis like my son and I do, there is an answer. It is simple:
\nget off that rollercoaster ride! Imagine grabbing
\nthose keys right next to you; imagine putting them
\nin the lock of your comparison cage; imagine turning
\nthe key and freeing yourself! You are the only person
\nwho has the power to free yourself. The keys are right
\nthere. We cannot be happy if we compare ourselves
\nto others. That comparison game is for the birds.<\/p>\n
I like to think in life we all are dealt a \u201cGet Out of Jail
\nFree\u201d card, similar to the one from the game Monopoly
\nto use when something is taking away our\u00a0happiness and joy.<\/p>\n
The first replacement thought for
\nthose lies is I AM DESERVING OF LOVE AND HAPPINESS
\nand placing that card confidently down on the table.
\n(Drop mic.)
\nWhen my son and I returned home that day, I went
\ninto our downstairs closet and grabbed the Monopoly
\ngame. Of course, because we are the \u201ctopsy-turvy-Tapleys\u201d
\nthe game wasn\u2019t in orderly fashion,
\nand looked like a tornado hit it. But after a few
\nmoments of searching, I found that special \u201cGet Out
\nof Jail free\u201d card, walked to my son\u2019s \u201csafe place\u201d and
\nasked him:
\n\u201cAre you ready to set yourself free?\u201d
\nIt doesn\u2019t happen overnight, but we are replacing
\nTRUTH for lies, and I sure wish I had started as young
\nas my son.<\/p>\n
Culled from\u00a0Autism Parenting Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently, my son came home from school\u2026 angry. I have been in counseling (for various reasons) and know that anger is just a reaction or response to pain, hurt, and sadness.\u00a0Anger is an emotion I subconsciously went to in the past before realizing that underneath all those outbursts and fits of rage was heartbreak I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2448,"featured_media":209589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csr.gtbank.com\/autism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csr.gtbank.com\/autism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csr.gtbank.com\/autism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csr.gtbank.com\/autism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2448"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csr.gtbank.com\/autism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209570"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/csr.gtbank.com\/autism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209591,"href":"https:\/\/csr.gtbank.com\/autism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209570\/revisions\/209591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csr.gtbank.com\/autism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csr.gtbank.com\/autism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csr.gtbank.com\/autism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csr.gtbank.com\/autism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}