Okay, I'm going to give you fair warning. I am going to whine in this post. I'm gonna share how I feel, and it not be right, and perhaps I'm a crappy dad for saying it, but it's on my mind, so I'm going to write about it.
I find it really difficult to relate to parents of typical children.
I feel like we're in this strange parallel universe where all parents, even those with special needs children, have at least one child who is typical. This typical child produces, in some manner, some resemblance of a typical parent-child relationship. I do not know a single family with multiple children, other than those I have passed in cyberspace, that have all special needs children. Usually it is one child affected, but other children are "normal".
I was assisting in Sunday School today when I realized I had no idea if the behaviour I was witnessing was normal or not. I don't know what normal is, I only know what my kids do... and that is not what most kids do.
I have written before about parent isolation. Most people have what you would consider peer groups, and most of those peer groups have a very predictable trajectory:
- Single people
- Childless couples, usually younger
- Couples with young children
- Couples with school age children
- Couples with teenagers
- Couples with an empty nest / university aged children
- Couples with a full empty nest and retired
I suppose we are closest to families with young children since although our children are pre-school age, they are both delayed developmentally (A much more so than T). Even still, it is weird watching toddlers go to the bathroom when your 3.5 year old wants his diapers.
So I say again - I don't know what typical parenting is. I only know what parenting my children is. And it is very different than typical.
I'll admit, I very much struggle with this. I went away on a trip last week for work, and when I came back the next morning, I prompted both kids to say hello to me (both were busy with our iPhones watching videos), just like any other morning. They did not appear to notice I went anywhere. There was no running to me yelling "Daddy, daddy", or "what did you get me", or "how was your trip". There ... was... nothing. Nothing. Like I never left.
Let me go out on a limb here and say most of us feel loved the most when we are known and accepted by others, and we know and accept other people. When I say "know", I mean at some deeper emotional level. "Life", such as it is, has been shared and some intimacy has been gained between people. I don't feel that way about my kids. It hasn't happened yet. It may never happen. I feel like emotionally I still have infants.
That makes me sad. It's not what I expected out of fatherhood.
Yes, I know it's not about me. But I can still mourn the fact that for me, fatherhood will be very different. If typical moments or rites of passage of fatherhood come for me, it will be later, or perhaps never.
Forgive me if I'm sad about that. It is what it is. But today what it is really sucks.
