In the next few weeks, my other kids will celebrate birthdays as well. We don't make a big deal of birthdays (much to my event-planning daughter's chagrin). And my eldest is nearly militant about not celebrating his birthday. So he's getting some belated food deliveries that hopefully will be nice surprises. Some pastrami with all the fixings, and a few days later, his favorite cookies, from a bakery I go a little crazy in, whenever I get there.
My autistic son will celebrate his birthday at his culinary work site, which is pretty great since one of the teachers offered to bake him a cake, and he'll have peers to celebrate with for a change, instead of just family. Last but surely not least is my daughter's big day. She's basically given up on trusting us to get her a gift she'll actually like, so she recently sent me photos of about twenty different things she'd be happy to get as gifts. It's actually a relief to be told what to get her, rather than deal with her disappointment if we choose badly.
This is all the mundane stuff of family life, which is kind of great when family life has had so many stressors for so long. Just this weekend, my mom underwent surgery after falling down a flight of stairs and breaking her hip. We're hoping she'll get back to being fully mobile after some time in rehab. It's been slow going so far in the hospital.
And just last night, we were out with newish friends, a couple whose son has experienced challenges not dissimilar to those one of our kids has been wrestling with. It's a funny kind of bond in an adult relationship, when you connect over the shared struggles of your kids. It's comforting, more than anything. It's also humbling. Then again today, out for a short walk with my autistic son, I ran into another friend. She'd essentially fled her apartment because her kids were making her crazy. She showed me the expletive-laden texts from her teenage daughter, just to prove the point. I said, "Come on over. I've got coffee, cookies, wine, whatever you might want." She stopped over for a few minutes, but said that she really wanted to go for a walk. So I joined her.
Lots of conversation about her daughter's insistence on having access to certain medications after diagnosing herself over the Internet...of course. We talked about how her husband goes one way with her daughter on these issues, while she goes another. And I just shared my mantra that if, as parents, you're not pulling together, in the same direction, you'll wind up pulling apart. I told her that I thought her daughter wanted to see a certain doctor who'd been pretty freewheeling with meds because she wanted a candyman, rather than someone who would obligate her to do the hard therapeutic/behavioral work in tandem with any needed medication. And I told her that as parents, it's our job to help our kids make the best choices for themselves, rather than indulge whatever pops into their underdeveloped teenage brains. Since their daughter is not yet eighteen, it's even more imperative that her parents continue to help chart the course. And since they're also paying for whatever treatment she accesses, I also think they get to have a pretty strong say. That's not blackmail; it's just reality. I don't think as parents that we're in any way obligated to enable our kids to make irresponsible or even self-destructive decisions. It's excruciating to have kids in pain, kids who are struggling. But none of that means ceding to kids control over medication and other decisions they don't have full grasp of and cannot take full responsibility for.
I know in my husband's and my parenting journey, we've done our best to make sure that our kids are engaged in whatever decisions we've had to make. But we have one child who has been unable for most of his life to make consequential decisions---including about his health--so we've had no choice but to make them for him. We've also made choices for our other kids, sometimes on their behalf, but as often as we could, in consultation with them. Life doesn't always line up neatly, allowing for deliberative choice-making, with lots of engagement and back and forth. Sometimes, you just need to get shit done. And sometimes in a hurry, during a crisis, under the time gun, whatever.
Parenting can be brutally hard. And loaded with some not very good options. But that doesn't mean you can punt on choosing. And when it's not brutally hard, it can even be more difficult than that. But we have to keep trying. And coming back to the love that animates all of our choices. Even if our kids hate us for making them.
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