To Resolve Or Not To Resolve, That Is The Question...?

A New Year, and for a lot of people, a chance to make a heap of resolutions that they probably will have broken by February!  I do not view making New Year resolutions a complete waste of time, I have made the odd New Year's resolution myself and have stuck with it.  Twenty-two years ago I gave up eating meat and have been a veggie-terrible to this day.  But neither do I reserve the New Year for setting new goals and making fresh starts.  As a mother of an ASC child, I find myself making resolutions all year round.  'I will stay calmer, even when my children are driving me up the wall, over the roof and back down again; I will find one-hundred and one new ways to make my children eat their chicken and veggies; I will stress less about the house work and spend more time with my children' etc.

One ever-popular New Year resolution to lose weight, exercise more and drink less I did in fact make back in October.  Yes, I know what you're thinking, but the gin was sacked and the tonic water promoted to position of my new BFF.  #amazeballs as they say!  As a consequence, my baby weight of six years is melting away.  As for the exercise, well, I don't want to go too crazy now do I?  Staying calmer is a daily challenge and consequently a daily resolution.  Some days I succeed, other days I ring my husband up wailing like a banshee to 'come home NOW!'  I know I am not alone.  The reason I know this is due to last year's resolution.

Last year's resolution was imposed by my mother.  I was to go out into the big wide World and make friends after a self-imposed exile of nearly two years.  Anyone who knows me, knows I am sociable and quite like a chat!  However, after a few bumpy episodes of people turning their back on me because of Harry and his ASC behaviours, I figured the safest course of action was just to not bother any more.  I won't lie, when these episodes happened, it hurt - a lot.  So when the family moved to Queensland just over two years ago, it was easy just to plod along with my own life bothering nobody, keeping the protective wrapping on.

For the sake of my youngest, Elliot, I did join a playgroup, which mercifully was an Autism playgroup.  Despite Elliot not having an ASC, I knew he would be able to play and make friends with other non-ASC siblings attending.  And I knew I would feel safe in the other parents' company.  Even when Elliot started school, I would still pop into playgroup to say hello, sometimes it would be my only conversations with adults, other than my husband, all week.  Eventually, being a good girl and doing as my Mummy told me, I took the Taurean bull in me by the horns and organised a coffee morning with the playgroup Mums and have not looked back since.  We are now all wailing banshees together, when the need arises, and occasionally drunken lushes!

Due to my inner-banshee, one resolution I have made especially for this New Year is to find more stress-less ways of doing things.  I mean, let's face it, parents in general have enough stress as it is but ASC parents have stress levels off the Richter scale.  The saying 'count to ten and breathe deeply' used to be 'count to ten and if you can't find a glass in time, just neck the gin from the bottle' in my house.  But given my gin hiatus, I need new tactics!  So if that means chicken and veggies disguised as a tin of spaghetti every night because it saves tea-time dramas, so be it.  With all the money I'm saving on my gin bill, I'm seriously considering hiring a cleaner every now and then, which in turn takes care of the house work stress/guilt. 

Now that I am back out in the World, a more serious resolution is to show more understanding and tolerance and to be less judgemental of people who struggle to understand ASC or who demonstrate a lack of comprehension for the life I lead.  There is nothing more soul destroying than a person responding to my explanation of some symptoms of ASC or ADHD with a 'but couldn't it just be...' or 'do you not think it's...'.   Belief that hidden disabilities are more controllable than we lead people to believe is just as infuriating as a person who listens to the description of what daily life is like when you have a child with ASC, but does not hear. 

Painful past experiences tend to make everyone 'once bitten, twice shy'.  In my case, it's been more a case of once bitten, twice mauled and three times chewed up and spat out.  Most encounters have been of a personal nature and I have persisted in the past trying to evoke some understanding in an attempt to maintain friendships and have, as a result, left myself open to further attack and rejection.  It really has been no wonder that I have worn a full suit of armour, wielding my sword at the first sign of battle for many years now and is something many, if not all, ASC parents I'm sure can relate to.  As such, you know my resolution is not necessarily going to be easy.  I will confess, in many cases the temptation to throttle is high.   

A friend of mine lead me to this quote by Ellen Notbohm.  'If you don't like something, change it.  If you can't change it, change the way you think about it.'  This year, I will continue to provide information about ASC and enlighten those who want to be enlightened.  For those who don't, I will try not to think less of them as people because of their inability or unwillingness to understand.  And in the event a person cannot take me and Harry into their life or can no longer keep us there, I will no longer take it personally and want to poke sticks in their eyes!  I will walk away singing 'Que Sera Sera'.  Obviously, this attitude is not merely due to a New Year but also down to the fact that becoming a serial murderer is not currently on my resolution list!  Therefore, I will have to keep all throttling in check and am going to have to find it deep within me to keep my tolerance levels high and continue to keep my alcohol to blood levels low.  Wish me luck!