Autism is Easier When I Take Care of Me

I screamed as loud as I could as the water from the shower head poured over me. I have no idea how long I was in there. I don’t know if anyone heard. Worst of all, I didn’t know if anyone cared. I had reached the end of my rope very quickly in raising a child with autism. With our extreme efforts and my sons lack of progress I told myself I was the problem. I started to consider removing myself from the picture.

But the problem didn’t begin overnight.

It had been a long, difficult two years. My husband had lost a job. We had moved. I was pregnant and my son was diagnosed with autism. We had already begun therapies prior to the diagnosis but kicked it into high gear shortly after.

We did everything the doctors and professionals told us to. We had him in ABA, speech, occupational, music, horse, feeding therapy as well as school. Not to mention there was no insurance coverage at the time for ABA so there was also the financial burden as well.

We were put on the timeline of ‘act now or he will be stuck like this forever’. People told us that we needed to be absolutely calm in dealing with his rage. One doctor even told me to go home and enjoy life with my son- after I told him about the endless poop smearing and screaming.

As you can imagine shuttling your child back and forth to endless hours of therapy does not leave much time to take care of one’s self, let alone breathe. Then the message delivered to parents about the urgency of acting and ‘being the perfect parent’ in an impossible situation didn’t help either. All it translated to was that I was screwing up my son- royally.

As I was going through this process I had an important realization that would change the way I began approaching the rest of our lives.

If I didn’t start taking care of myself I was not going to be here much longer.

In raising my son I had lost myself. I no longer went skiing or cycling- two sports of which I adored. I did not exercise regularly and that needed energy outlet as well as my thinking time had vanished. I was stress eating and had been gaining weight. That was just the physical part.

We were beyond stressed. Stressed so much that it was hard to breathe most days. I had chest tightness and panic attacks. Something as an accomplished athlete and college graduate I had never had before. My work harder approach had not worked, in fact it had brought us here.

I learned that most of my decisions for myself and child were made in fear. Based on some arbitrary timeline of some professional. I have since worked to rediscover my passion for photography, the outdoors and have picked up Pilates. While it is hard work to keep up time for myself I love every moment of it and feel that I come back as a stronger parent.

There are also those days that I don’t get as much me-time in as I would like but I have learned that even five minutes is enough. A few deep breathes while making lunch, listening to some calm music or pretending to meditate for five minutes.

I say pretend because I still will not claim that I am doing it right. But it seems to help.

In addition to taking care of me we started taking care of the family and other areas of needs. We don’t do as much therapy anymore. We feel it is important to give my son time to play and explore as well as time for the family.

In this process, we discovered that my son is a quick wit that loves to joke and it almost seems that his (severe, limited verbal) autism disappears when we play. We have even discovered a strategy to teach him words in play at a rate much faster than he ever learned in speech therapy.

There are days that are still hard. Taking care of me is what keeps me sane and being able to be the parent I want for my child.

I never knew it until I tried, but autism is actually easier when I also take care of me.

Written by, Gina Baker

Gina Baker is a mother of a child with autism and together they are trail blazing autism at spectrumlane.com. She is also a Life Coach and play therapist whose goal is to help parents of kids with autism ‘feel better’.

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