Peeved

I’ve been feeling a bit pissed off this week. Nothing major, just a frustration at some people. I had a call from an old friend who had her son pre diagnosed with aspergers this week. She had a feeling as the signs have been there. She’s an excellent mother and deliberated for a while before taking him for an assessment. She decided to go for it as, if nothing else, it would help her to know what to do when his anxieties got the best of him. As those of us with kids on the spectrum know, anxiety is usually the main issue. It’s like it’s more extreme in our kids and counts for most of the behavioural issues that they have. Or at least that’s what I’ve found. Anyway, she was told that yes, he did seem to have ticked all the boxes. It doesn’t matter whether you think it may be true or not, the reality still hits you like a sledgehammer.

At the other end of the scale are the people who desperately want their kids to get a diagnosis. I know of a woman who, throughout nearly her whole role of motherhood has tried to get one. She has three kids and through kinder and school has, one by one, taken her kids to specialists. She’s asked questions of parents who do have kids with autism/aspergers and knows all the right answers by now. She couldn’t get it to start with as she didn’t know enough about it but finally she’s hit paydirt and has got her 3rd child diagnosed. I used to feel sorry for her and those like her. How sad that she wants sympathy so much that she’ll invent problems with her kids just so that she’ll get it. Now though, I’m just pissed off. Not only because her kids will have a label that isn’t necessary. Not even that she’s rorting the system to fuel her sickness. More that my friend is hurting. She was genuinely worried that getting a diagnosis might do more harm than good, that she didn’t want to put a label on her child that may not be necessary. He’s a gorgeous child, a little quirky, a little different, the things we love about him. In the end it was to help him, to help the family to help him and to help the school to help him. Not much in it for her at all. I feel like people like this other woman are making a mockery out of people like her. Unfortunately she’s not the first nor the last person that I’ll meet who do the same thing.