For every blog there is a reason

First, I have to give credit to part of the inspiration for this blog: Jeffrey Cohen's book The Asperger Parent. The book is careful to focus on what it's like to be the parent of a child with AS, rather than on AS itself or the child.

The other inspiration was my mother's comment a couple of years ago: "I'm sorry this is happening to you." At the time, I was taken aback; "This isn't happening to me," I said, "It's happening to C." And yet, even though I still don't think that AS is something that "happens to" anyone, or that it's necessarily something to feel sorry about, raising a child with AS just isn't easy.

I can already tell that on this blog, I'm often going to catch myself and qualify or clarify what I've said. So here I go: when other parents tell me, "XYZ (dealing with C.) must be so hard," I tell them, "No parent has an easy job." It's true, and I'm not just trying to make them feel better.

Another clarification, before my mother reads this and protests: she certainly appreciates C.'s wonderful qualities as much, or more (she's the grandma, after all) as anyone. She just wishes life for her own child, me, were smooth sailing all the time.

That brings me to the tough part of being the parent of a child with AS, or any child. It's not that it's hard to live with them (even though it can be). It's hard to raise them, teach them, and live with them because we love them, and we want everything to be smooth sailing for them. And it's not. For kids with AS, it hardly ever is.