Honesty

One of the reasons I wanted to create this blog was to share my experiences with other parents and to be a help and source of support. I can't do that without being completely honest. Having a child with Asperger's is hard and exhausting and frustrating. It makes you want to cry and scream sometimes. But also parenting other children without Asperger's is equally as hard when you can hold them all to the same expectations. They also can get frustrated having to appease their sibling or handle the situations that occur because of the behavior of the sibling due to Asperger's. 

I say all this to say that there is an ebb and flow to frustrations of the parent and the other children. I have had years where I managed daily emails or phone calls from teachers to handle behavior issues only to come home and battle homework for 2 hours with many tears from both him and me. Thankfully neither of my girls had any issues in school at the time. But now my son is doing amazingly well and I hardly hear from school at all, maybe once every week or two from the teachers as a summary and rarely with issues but they have happened. A few things have come up with my girls which I luckily have the mental capacity to deal with since I don't deal with daily issues from my son as that would almost be too much. 

I feel like I'm rambling but those of you that have multiple children will understand this and I hope you feel better knowing you aren't alone and in the acknowledgment that it can be overwhelmingly hard at times. 

One other note is that siblings of children with Asperger's generally learn at an earlier age to be more compassionate, thoughtful and selfless. My oldest child stands up for many people in her class when they are picked on and is always willing to help others. She also works very well with my son to the point that if he is having a meltdown at school and the teachers cannot calm him they have an action plan to call her to help. 

"Always remember: you're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." -A.A. Milne