As a parent, your expectations about your life change the moment you realize that you’re bringing another life into the world that will be dependent upon you. Then your child is diagnosed as special needs and that additional responsibility shifts your expectations yet again. The word “accommodate” gains a different definition with the weight of its legal ramifications and societal implications. It denotes battles with educators. It signifies the appeal you make to family and friends to accept you and your children.

I went through a grieving process with each diagnosis for my son, then husband, then daughter. Each with its own set of revelations, challenges, and eventual adjustment. At first, I struggled to explain to others our circumstances hoping for acceptance in hopes of them staying in our lives. Then I realized that I couldn’t expect them to understand what they didn’t want to acknowledge. I can’t expect them to accommodate us any more than they can expect us to be neurotypical.

After so many last minute cancellations, or change in plans, people stop inviting you. The phone calls stop because they can’t hear you over the meltdowns in the background. They don’t want to deal with your kid but they don’t have the courage to tell you. The diagnosis is a downer to them and they don’t want to hear about it. They maybe see the signs of it in themselves or their kid and don’t want to discuss the topic lest they have to face it in their own life. They don’t believe in the diagnosis of autism. We’ve heard it all and all of it delivered with equal measures of good intentions and ignorance.

“They look normal are you sure they’re autistic?”
“Have you tried…?”
“Maybe they’ll grow out of it…?”
“We’re so sorry. Well, at least they’re not sick…”

The hardest days are the ones where no one is willing to accept them including myself. When I’m not accommodating them by being unreasonable. Now I don’t try to convince others what I know to be the truth. My kids are amazing.

If atypical means intelligent, polite, opinionated, creative, sensitive, and loving then I’ll take it over neurotypical any day. I can only assume that neurotypical should have the negative connotation since most of the kids who’ve abused, bullied, or traumatized my kids are considered “normal” .

With every passing year, I find myself adapting to yet another seismic shift in my perception of my family and struggling to find my footing. Yet the most painful is the trauma my kids have had to suffer. A close second is the loss of those I’ve cared about who won’t accept them. Their lack of accommodation cuts the deepest of all.

The true acceptance I hope for is that anyone who claims to love someone who is neurodiverse will learn enough about their condition to show them that they care and that they will always accommodate them in their heart.