Saturday, March 3, 2018

Special needs envy??

Is there such a thing as special needs envy? I see myself sometimes looking at other special kiddos and how they are able to do things that my son cannot & feeling a little jealous. Weird to think that we can have a jealousy amongst our special kiddos, right? It is true though. I remember years ago I was sitting in a lesson in church and the instructor was talking about how she had wished her daughter who struggled with mental illness had Down syndrome. The comparison she used was not the best, but the idea of what she said struck me so odd. I had two little boys at that point and I could only think that what she said was so not fair to anyone struggling with a kid who had any difficulties. Fast forward today and I can totally see where she was coming from. How nice it would be to have our son feed himself(teenage boy would like to eat all day long right now), feeding him takes a minimum of 30 minutes at a time. To be able to tell us with his own words what the heck is bothering him, that would be amazing. I could go on and on about the “only if he could’s”, but with that jealousy I know we would not have the amazing things that he has taught us because of what he is. So yes, jealousy happens amongst the special needs parenting life for sure. In the past 16 years of raising Mr. B we have heard it all, “you have been given this child because you are strong” “He only gives you what you can handle”, “I don’t know how you guys do what you do, you are amazing” you get the idea. People really do mean the best when they say these things. Most of the time it would be good to hear “how do you do it?” & I am so thankful when someone says “you guys have it hard, but you make it look easy” because that is the goal. We know we have it hard, no denying it, but when we hear from someone who sees that we are trying and let’s us know we are appearing to make it look like that then thank you!! I am thankfully jealous of what we have and couldn’t do it without the amazing guy  that I have by my side to help make it through each day.