Part 1: The Question That Sickens Autism Parents
Do I favor my verbal child over my non-verbal child? Let's talk about what others won't.
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It’s crossed my mind many times,
But just like with any decent parent of multiple children, the thought of having a “favorite child” unsettles my stomach as I recoil at the thought... And when one or more of your children is special needs and autistic (as is in my own family that includes two young children on the autism spectrum), the idea of a favorite offspring (for whatever reasoning) gets downright nauseating...
AND infuriatingly simple to comprehend and sympathize with by myself...
Think with me for a moment. We’d all like to unwaveringly believe in all certainty that a parent of multiple children canNOT regard one child in particular as their favorite among the kids collectively... BUT we ALL then must come to avert our eyes as we silently acknowledge within the deepest parts of ourselves that this ideal just simply isn’t the case in our reality, that someone most definitely can—and many, many do—have a favorite child, sometimes even blatantly so as to be bitterly witnessed by the children themselves and the public.
Are you potentially a favorite child of your parents, as I can easily come to admittance about myself in my younger years?.. Or did you perhaps ocupy a psychological role or archetype in opposition to the favorite? The Scapegoat, maybe (as I curiously also have taken up in identity after rather ungracefully falling to a crash from the Number 1 place in my young adulthood)?
As human beings, we’re promised many occasions of falling short of our ideals in life. This is our destiny whether we become parents or not. We all have felt envy, anger, and other unflattering emotions that we avoid making public news of, and each of us have acted on our ugly impulses in some capacity, to be sure. Just an honest glance around at The World circling beneath our feet reinforces this narrative of our inevitable imperfection and shortcomings as fallen humans.
But what is there to also highlight in the case of parental failing in the form of holding one of their multiple children as superior to another of theirs?.. What if this parent actually has a favorite child, and what if one of those children-at-odds happen to be legally disabled, special needs, and diagnosed as having Autism Spectrum Disorder?..
Do we:
Automatically expect that the typical child must naturally be the favorite?
Wonder if the neurodivergent child instead might actually be the favorite?
Wag our fingers and shake our heads in judgement of this parent?
Silently accept our inner feelings of understanding and sympathy (mixed with—just a dash of—our nausea)?..
OR, actually a combination of any of the above possible scenarios?
You may, or may not, have the honest answer of your ideals... And you may, or may not, wish to read your own personal response out loud to us all.
I do NOT favor my verbal child over my non-verbal child.
And likewise, I don’t consider my less-typical child to be any more special than my more typical child.
(… Will Be Continued)
Until Part 2,
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