To put it bluntly, I’ve been struggling lately. I’ve been battling with issues of self-esteem, lack of worthiness, and enough second guessing to make me uncomfortable with every decision I make.
I had no idea why all this was going on, and I thought about it very hard, prayed on it, and thought some more.
It’s actually very simple what’s going on:
No matter what choices, decisions, disciplines or rewards I have set down for Zoe, I am unsure if any of them measure up to what my little girl needs.
This is not so with Amelia. I can look back and recall the year and a half that time outs were a an excellent and effective tool. I can even look back at that desperate time when they failed, and the scramble to find new things that work and the very slow, long journey to a renewed discipline approach with Amelia, which was complimented by her attaining a certain level of maturity.
When I look back at my time and approach with Zoe, this is not so. I’ve got nothing, except a brittle connection between that when she has dairy, she doesn’t sleep. That’s it. There’s nothing else I can pin down. What works today, may not work tomorrow. What diet changes we do, are they enough? When things fail, I’m lost: is this die off, is this frustration, is this more poison in her body?
What if, what else, what now?
That’s autism.
Pardon me if I’m not going to be one of those people who champion what a great thing it is that my daughter’s brain functions so uniquely! Because I’m having a really hard (difficult, impossible, nonexistent) time training her up in how to live life at all. I’m stumped on potty training. I’m confused on the biting / self-biting, what causes it, what will stop it. I have no idea if she understand stop signs or faith or danger.
I’m not trying to be self-involved when I tell you I feel like a failure. I just don’t have any friggin’ proof that I’m doing a single thing right. Or wrong.
It’s a mystery.So it seems to me, in conversations I’ve had with friends of faith, of sermons and songs and scriptures that have caught me off guard, that perhaps there isn’t anything I can do. Perhaps, this child rearing project must completely be in God’s hands. Go forth with the diet, but understand that it may only be a small pitiful illusion of control in a thing I can’t even get a basic grip on.
Surrender it, trust God, and try not to hide the fact that I’m crossing my fingers behind my back.
Wish me luck.
