Dreams Shift, But They Never Fade: A Father’s Journey with Autism
When I became a parent, I had lots of dreams for my child.
Most of my dreams revolved around sports: Little League baseball, peewee football, go-kart racing, bike riding, whatever he wanted to do.
In fact, since my family is involved in racing, I couldn’t wait to put him in the family race car!
I also thought about best friends, building blanket forts, and sleepovers. I wanted to try to be the “cool dad,” lol. Later, I would want to teach him to drive a car, change his oil, change a tire, and handle any other basic car maintenance.
Then, an autism diagnosis hit, and all of those dreams went out the window.
Why? Because that’s what I was told. I was told he might never speak, read, write, play a sport, make a friend, ride a bike, drive a car along with a bunch of other things.
So, my dreams shifted.
They shifted to dreams of him talking, telling me when he doesn’t feel well or if he got hurt. Dreams of him writing or typing his name. Dreams of him knowing his address and my phone number so he could tell people if he ever got lost.
I’m sad to admit this, but when my second child was born, I felt like I was given another chance to have those same dreams again, including one additional one that he and his older brother would be best friends.
Once again, we received an autism diagnosis.
Only this time, my dreams didn’t go out the window. By then, I had met other parents of autistic kids and was watching them do amazing things as they got older.
They were just doing it in their own time. This helped me realize that all of my original dreams for my kids are still possible, and to never give up.
In all honesty, I never gave up on my original dreams for my kids after their diagnosis, mostly because I was in denial. Secondly, because I will never give up on my kids.
While my dreams for my kids have shifted from my original ones, the original dreams are still there.
Now we have one that we can mark off the list: we played baseball in a special needs league, and they love it! It may look a little different than I originally thought, but it is awesome.
They did it all in their own time, and I have hope they will both do more in their own time. It may look a little different, but different is awesome.
If I have one dream that’s at the top of my mind, it’s for my boys to be self-sufficient before I leave this earth. That’s my biggest dream for them, to be able to take care of themselves before I’m no longer around.
Written by Ryan LeFevers of My Heroes Raising Boys on the Spectrum
