I had one of those evenings where I felt I could do no right with Simon. I like to go out with him on some nights that Diana works. Usually it's just two or three hours to one of the theme parks, or dinner at a kid-friendly place. Tonight he was being rude, yelling at me and generally unpleasant. Instead of responding rationally, I did so mostly emotionally, and probably reinforced the behavior in the process. Not a proud moment for me.
There's a reason I worry as much as I do about my perceived failings. Keep in mind that I'm not the shitty parent trying to protect my kid from adversity and failure by giving him participation trophies, but I don't want to do anything that could have a lasting negative effect. The kid has a memory like a stone tablet. He remembers stuff.
So do I.
About the time I was 7 or 8, my family was in the car driving somewhere, probably for a camping trip. Like most kids my age (before DVD players and iPads), I often passed the time by trying to engage with my parents in some way. For me, it was reading the road signs. I would add that there are a lot of interesting names to sound out in southwest New York, like Salamanca and Allegany State Park. At some point, my sign reading annoyed my step-father to the point that he yelled at me to "shut up."
That moment, seemingly unimportant at the time, stuck with me (obviously, since I'm writing about it as a 40-something). There are two important outcomes from that moment that I wasn't able to identify until adulthood when chatting about something seemingly unrelated with my therapist years ago. The first is that I ceased sharing in anything that I thought was academic success. If I did well in school, I was doing it for myself and never shared it with my parents. Second, I felt that anything I had to say was unimportant or wrong in his eyes, and that got worse with age. It took a long time to learn to be wrong, and I still suck at it. I trace it back to that moment. How screwed up is that?
That experience is why I worry as much as I do about screwing up Simon and his relationship with me. It's probably an unfounded worry most of the time, but it still worries me. He's going to have enough challenges with all of the "normal" issues of growing up, augmented by ASD specific issues. He doesn't need me making it worse.
Fortunately I have a partner in Diana to put my mind at ease, and at least most of the time we're good at handing off the primary parent role in the moment when we feel like we're doing it wrong. Her patience is remarkable compared to mine. It's definitely a team sport.
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