The process for becoming a parent takes nine months. We wait and have all of these dreams and ideas about who our child is going to be. What they’re going to be like.
So when your child has been diagnosed with something, either immediately, or as they continue to develop, you run into a problem, you hit a stop sign. Something happens and whatever thoughts you had about your child, are all wrong now.
You find yourself supporting your child in ways you weren’t anticipating because of this medical diagnosis, or behavioral diagnosis, or cognitive diagnosis. Some sort of label is placed on your kid that changes everything about what you were thinking about how their life will go.
When that happens, you can be left feeling alone and isolated. Hurt and desperate, and sad and scared and overwhelmed and all of the things. And it’s in that moment when you have two choices to make.
Are you going to make it better?
Or are you going to make it worse?
Parents of special needs children generally have six mindsets that need to shift. Six decisions that they need to make, with purpose, to help them live more comfortable, more fulfilled, more worthwhile lives. These six mindsets are:
It’s not your fault.
You are not alone.
Your child is not broken.
The experts know the diagnosis…but you know your kid.
The truth is somewhere in the middle.
And yes, you can.
You
need to choose these mindsets. Each one is typically a decision that was made without intention, and just like in other areas of our lives when we aren’t purposeful about what we decide to believe, it usually causes some problems. It certainly did for me. It wasn’t until I hit rock bottom, literally crying on the bathroom floor, that I realized how badly these decisions were hurting me and my family. That was when I made the purposeful decision to change my mind.
I decided that I was going to believe the truth; I was going to believe in what was helpful.
When you make the decision to believe in, work from, and act out of these six mindsets, your life begins to change. They are the anchor thoughts you use when you’re having a really bad day.
Getting there is a four-step process of choosing a new mindset, a new belief. It’s actually very simple, though not always easy.
Step one is the decision to do it. You have to first realize that what you are doing isn’t making anything better. It’s making things worse. You have to be willing to admit that you are wrong about how you are thinking in your head. I hit that point on the bathroom floor. I realized my real problem wasn’t my son’s autism. It was everything I thought about his autism. It was everything I believed was true about it, even though none of it was actually true.
The decision to change leads to the second step, the work of changing your thoughts and beliefs. That’s when you may find yourself moving from blaming yourself for being the cause of your child’s diagnosis, to understanding that you don’t have that kind of power. It’s learning that your child isn’t broken; he/she needs support to grow and develop. Remembering there is a whole world of people out there struggling just like you are, and you can, and should, connect with them. The work is learning to not get lost in the sensationalism of a diagnosis or remain silent when experts tell you what you should do. You CAN do this. You can get up and keep going even on the hard days. You are capable of handling everything with the right resources. Making these decisions can be a lot of work, maybe even some of the hardest work you have ever done.
And yet
that hard work leads to the third step which is when the shift starts to happen in your mind and you no longer feel like you are convincing yourself of these new beliefs, but you really believe them. When that happens, you begin to more easily live from them. You make better decisions. Better decisions with therapies and caregivers. With your time and how you show up for your family. Many of you likely have more than one important relationship in your life; another child, a spouse, or partner. You need this shift to allow you the space to be there for them the way they need you to be.
And that’s when the last step occurs, the payout. Slowly and little by little you begin to just feel better about your life. You don’t feel defeated or empty or hopeless when you get to the end of your day. You might even start to have moments when you feel excited to get up and begin your day again. For me, it was like I was living a new life. One where I saw possibilities for myself and especially for my son and family.
Those four steps; the decision, the work, the shift, and the payout were required to get me to the place where I could parent my son instead of going to war with his autism. It’s what allowed me to know him better, know myself better, and learn how to support others struggling with the same false beliefs.
The hardest thing about this process is that those six mindsets seem so true. Even though logically you can understand that they aren’t, they powerfully feel like they are. And no matter what we do, we follow and act from what we feel is the truth, not what the truth really is. The good news is that you can change your mind. You have the ability to consider your life and make new decisions—with purpose—about what you want and how you want to be. Simply ask yourself: I am making this better, or am I making this worse?
Many of us wait for life to hit us on the head before we start considering things like this. But you can make the decision to start the work before you hit rock bottom. And you deserve that. Your child deserves that. Your family deserves that. So go ahead and take the time to consider, then be purposeful about starting the work to live a life that is worth it.
Jennie Meyer is a Holly Springs mom and a mindset coach trained in strategic intervention techniques through Robbins-Madanes Coaching. You can find out more about her on her website www.considerjennifer.com.
