Not long after my little one’s diagnosis, I was at a gathering with a group of friends. One of the women there was a friend of a friend that I had not met before. She had a child with a ‘disability’ (sorry, I do not like that word) and was going through a divorce. We chatted for a bit, she asked about how things were going with my little one, and then she told me a statistic.
She said, “Did you know that around 80% of marriages where a child has a disability end in divorce?”
I politely said, “Wow”.
But in my mind there were several thoughts and reactions. First, I thought, “Well, isn’t that a bright and cheery statistic.” Secondly, I got fighting mad.
Divorce doesn’t ‘just happen’ and if the kid didn’t have enough to deal with, now they come from a broken home. Then I wondered what kind of stress does one parent put on the other; does parent #1 become resentful when parent #2 doesn’t do what parent #1 thinks parent #2 should do? All the while parent #2 is in a different stage of acceptance or understanding and has no idea why parent #1 is angry with them because they had no idea what parent #1 wanted in the first place. Whew!
Do you have expectations? Everyone does. Do you expect others to fulfill those expectations?
We all do that too. The problem comes when an individual gets resentful, angry, bitter, jaded. In last week’s article, I compare parents of children with differences to that of a team of Marines. Parents constantly fight the world from stealing their family’s happiness. Expectations can rob you of your happiness. Expectations can shift your focus away from your child, who matters, to a dirty bathroom, that doesn’t matter.
All that matters in this world is a kid’s wellbeing.
In truth, we control our expectations. We just have to be on guard from allowing our expectations to control us and rob us of happiness.
A Different Kind of Normal 