Look, I haven't written one of these posts in awhile but I'm feeling inspired. Unfortunately, guilt is my muse tonight and deservingly so.
Elliott is so disagreeable anymore. If we ask him to do anything, literally anything, he just melts down. I don't believe that he's trying to be difficult. You can see it in his eyes. He's completely overwhelmed and doesn't know what else to do.
We're working so hard to provide the boys with as much stability as humanly possible and then some.
However, life becomes very difficult with this type of problem because we can't do anything without setting him off. At least that's how it feels.
We try to give him as much control over his life as possible because so much of his life is out of his control. It breaks my heart to see him struggle with life like this.
Maybe we waited too long to remove Gavin from the house? I know we waited too long and that's my fault because I tried so hard to keep my family together. I think I may have thought it was the right thing to do at the time. Clearly,that was the wrong decision and I deeply regret the impact my mistake has had on the lives of the rest of my family, more specifically, Elliott.
You know, there's no instructions that come along with parenting, let alone special needs parenting.
I always do what I feel in my heart is the right thing to do. Many times, the right thing to do is not obvious and all you can do is what you think is right at the time, with the information you have available to you..... It's like trying to answer a multiple choice question, where you get very little information to go on and have to pick the best answer out of four, when all four answers are correct. One is just *more *correct. Anyone that has done anything in the medical field and take. A National Registry test, knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Unfortunately, many times I find that in hindsight, I have made the wrong decision, even though my intentions were honorable.
The are so many areas in special needs parenting that are so murky, they don't even qualify as grey areas. To make matters even worse, there are people lined up, seemingly waiting to criticize every mistake made, like they could do better themselves.
It's easy to armchair quarterback because you have nothing invested and feel no sense of urgency. Plus, you have the benefit of knowing the outcome before you make the decision.
I'm thankful that for the most part, we don't have to deal with *too much* of that crap in real life.
I'd like to give a hug to all of you out there facing this type of ridicule and I'd love to give a firm *Agent Gibbs *smack to the back of the head of those dishing out the ridicule. That's an NCIS reference, for those wondering. :-)
