Liane Holliday Willey - Pretending to be Normal

The situations that caused me the most stress and so the greatest risks, involved my children. I think of my family as a closed entity, one that can invite people to visit on our own terms, when and if we feel up to it. I am easily upset when people do not seem to understand I have a protective shield around my children and my husband. I never interfere with other people’s family dynamics, at least not to my knowledge, and I think it only right that I expect others to respect our privacy My expectations are rarely met and this bothers me. Before we had children, my husband and I were in complete control of our environment. If company came to visit when we were uninterested in entertaining, we would pretend not to be home. If we walked into a restaurant and found it to be too crowded, we would leave. If too many people wanted too much of our time, we quit answering our calls. If the outside world became too invasive, we turned it out and off. We never tried to be rude. We were trying to be honest.

When we had children our privacy vanished. Our closed doors turned to open windows. Our quiet walks down the block became parades all the children in the neighborhood followed. Our phone rang until we picked it up. People knocked on our door and peered in our windows, waving us over to come greet them. I smiled a lot then. I did not know what else to do. I gabbed and laughed and poured lemonade and made cookies and planned elaborate parties for my children and their friends. I was learning the tricks of the trade by reading the neighborhood like a «how to» book. The only problem was, this book was incomplete. It did much to tell me what to do, but little to tell me what not to do. I could not figure out how not to have children over when the noise was too much for me; how not to speak to neighbors when I had nothing to say; how not to act cheery when I felt closed in on. My emotions were scrambling and my insights were fogged. I knew what I needed to be content but I did not know how to meet those needs without stepping on the needs of my family. I could go back to locking the doors but my children wanted their friends to come play. I could ignore people but this would embarrass my family. I could refuse friendships but this would leave my family lonely. I did not know how to make graceful exits or give subtle hints. I did not know how to make transitions. I did not know how to separate the girls’ needs from my own needs without tearing us apart.

Children require a team of people to keep them healthy, educated, happy and socially accepted. This reality did not put me at ease, but it was clear to me and therefore something I told myself I needed to learn to live with. Some members of the team were easier to understand than others. Visits to the doctor’s office, for example, were no great mystery to me. The girls’ physical needs could be charted, measured, analyzed and fixed. Doctors did not chit chat, they got right to business then moved on to the next person in need. Other fundamentals were not as easy to address or tend to. School issues top the list of those which confound me. The most simple-sounding duties blew me away. For example, what exactly did it mean to plan a child’s class party? With no precise guidelines or definition of terms in tow, I had no answer but plenty of questions. Was any kind of entertainment acceptable or did I need to hire a dog and pony act? Could I provide any sort of snack or was I expected to bring in fully nutritious main course meals? Was I suppose to poll the parents and ask them for their thoughts? Was I supposed to invite them to attend? If I planned a craft, were there rules about which materials the kids could use? I did not know where to begin or worse, how to end. The experience was terrifying to me. I was filled with the fear that others would discover my awkward individuality and so I found it very, very difficult to ask others what they did for parties. Everyone else I observed seemed to naturally know what to do, even the new moms. I knew that if I confessed my ignorance or articulated my thoughts, I would run the risk of embarrassing my children. After all, who wanted to be the daughter of the know-nothing mom?

I remember, in particular, one Halloween party when my oldest daughter was in elementary school. My husband and I showed up to watch the party, as did many other parents. We were the first to arrive and sat comfortably in the back of the room, happy to observe. I was content and calm in the classroom; I always am. Young children and the elderly are easy for me to be around. They are gracious toward my differences and accepting, despite my pitfalls. Tom and I talked to the children as they came our way and smiled at the teacher to show we were enjoying ourselves. It was a great party, until the other parents arrived. When other moms and dads came in, it became crystal clear to me that I had missed another unspoken rule. They were all in costumes, we were not. How were they privy to knowledge we did not have? I imagined the worst. Did they have a private club whose members include only those who can recite a secret cookie recipe? Were our names going to be tossed around every Halloween as the couple who came in street clothes? I obsessed on this worry for days and days on end, until my husband finally convinced me I had made no grand faux pas. But I know I will never forget the feeling that overwhelmed me when my daughter ran to us and asked us why we were not wearing a costume like the other mommies and daddies.

Life goes on for we parents with Asperger’s Syndrome traits no matter how many times we ask ourselves what just happened or what could we have done differently. There is no predictability parents can count on, no objectivity that can overshadow the subjectivity innate to children, and no amount of wishing and hoping that can forestall the inevitable… we will make mistakes. The challenge I set for myself is simple. I tell myself I will never know what to do or how to act unless I become a consciously savvy consumer of the parenting market. I have slowly found good friends whom I can ask for advice and guidance, friends who will take me under their wing and never laugh at me or misguide me.

One of my parenting problems is grounded in my inability to generalize information to specific situations. I am only a good problem solver under two circumstances: if there is no real right or wrong answer, for instance when I am writing a creative fiction story; and if there are very clear cut answers, for example the kind that can be found when I design and conduct research studies. When flexible variables affect the situation, things like human emotions, social mores, hidden agendas, and personal biases, I am left without a clue. Most things that involve children seem to include variables I cannot readily identify. Unfortunately, this means I am not a very consistent-minded parent. I approach each new obstacle we come to as if I have never met anything like it before. I end up spending too much time analyzing and rethinking what kinds of reactions I should have to my children’s behaviors. I have my rules, but it seems my daughters always find new ways to bend them. Each bend requires me to go back to square one in search of a solution to the problem. I am positive this leaves my children uneasy and, on occasion, undisciplined. They know full well when I will be upset with their behavior; that is never the issue. What they cannot predict, is what I might do about it.

From my long litany of awkward moments in history, one stands out as particularly bizarre, even to my friends who accept my Asperger traits. One afternoon time slipped away from me, leaving me terribly late in picking up my twins from their preschool. I immediately rushed from where I was and what I was doing, and drove myself as fast as I could without breaking the law, to their school. When I got to their building, I ran toward their classroom, right past all the stares and puzzled looks coming my way. I knew it was inappropriate for me to be running down a school hall but I was past the point of worrying about that. I had let my daughters down and I needed to make everything right again. I finally found my twins and was much relieved to see they were calmly talking to their teachers. I gave up my running and slowed my pace to a walk giving the girls time to finish their conversation. The teachers stopped talking the moment they saw me. Their mouths opened, their eyes grew wide and they began to laugh. The girls turned around to see what the laughter was about, but when they saw me they did not even smile. Their little faces looked at me as if they had never seen me before. I could not understand the faces I saw. I did not know why the teachers were laughing and why the girls were stunned. Confused, I asked one of the girls’ teachers what was wrong. She broke into loud laughter and said, «Only you could come here like THAT». Puzzled, I looked at one of my twins as she shouted «Mommy what is wrong with you?» And then at the other twin who could think of nothing to say. I knew then that I had made another error in judgement. When I flew from the beautician’s chair I knew full well I was in the middle of having my hair highlighted and I knew I did not look my best, but I never thought for an instant that anyone would be so shocked to see me like this. I did not think I looked that horrible. I was so surprised to see the reactions around me. To me, my being late had one solution: get the girls as quickly as I could. It did not matter to me if I was covered in red dye or not. It did matter to my daughters. One twin cried all the way home and the other kept finding new ways to tell me how angry she was at me. I did the only thing I can do during times like this. I made an apology and told the girls I hoped they knew I had not meant to upset them.