Why We Do What We Do (an ABA Love Letter)

A love letter.

Beloved moms, dads, brothers, sisters, grandparents, and caretakers of a child with autism:

Thank you for sharing your child with me. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be in your home at all hours of the day and night. In sickness and in health. For better and for worse. Till elimination of problem behavior and a functional form of communication do us part.

I’ll be knocking at your door on 6am Monday morning ready to wake up your darling and help her get ready for school. I’ll be there while you iron shirts on the bed, carefully pack lunches, and kiss curly heads on their way to the bus. I’ll stand in your kitchen as you freeze too-hot oatmeal and microwave milk until the temperature is just so. I’ll be there for the long toilet training days. The feeding protocols. The IEP meetings. The outings to the grocery store and dentist’s office and speech evaluations. I’ll be there for the late nights. Sleeping protocols or bedtime routines. I’ll be there to ride out the tantrum, to perfect the toothbrushing routine, to throw your child in the air as he signs for “up” and giggles with glee.

I’ll work next to you through promotions and job loss. Through birthday parties and graduations. I’ll be in your home during meltdowns, bad days, sleep regression, skill loss, hair pulls, destroyed rooms, medication changes, broken dishes, band-aids and bites.

 I’ll see you get pretty close to losing it. Losing your glasses because your child flushed them down the toilet. Losing your keys because your child snuck them to unlock his iPad from its hiding place. Losing your patience because you just can’t re-watch the same 3-second clip of a Barney song in Portuguese, AGAIN. I’ll see you pretty close to losing your damn mind.

I’ll see the desperation in your face as we carry your love onto the bus kicking and screaming, day after day. I’ll sit across from you and hold space as you weep with heartache when your child is bullied at school. I’ll help you wrestle your child out of a grocery store when things do not go as planned. I’ll navigate school systems and IEP meetings and classroom changes with you. I’ll be your best teammate and biggest cheerleader.

I’ll watch you look at your child in moments of awe and wonder. I’ll watch you marvel at each and every tiny victory. I’ll remember the tears in your eyes at the first babbles of “mama” and the sight of your face smooshed up against the window as your baby learns to ride a two-wheeler for the first time. I’ll see the twinkle in your child’s eye when daddy gets home from work. The pride you’ll feel when your child pets a dog for the first time. The celebration of pee-pee on the potty. The cheers for the independent completion of homework. The first successful trip to the post office, problem behavior free. When your baby gets a drop of water on her shirt and calmly asks to change.

And I’ll sob (big, loud, ugly sobs) at the beauty and magnificence of your life. This is Holy Ground. To be a part of your family, to be a witness to your life, your parenting, your gentleness, your patience, your understanding, your tremendous love, this is magic.  I’ll never stop learning from you.

Thank you for your willingness to trust me. To listen eagerly to what I have to say. Thank you for having hard conversations, late night phone calls, and sometimes too-long meetings. Thank you for opening your door day after day. For offering me coffee every morning even though I will always have to decline. Thank you for the homemade birthday cards, for the school pictures, for telling me the ways your child stares outside the window and watches for my car.

Someone told me once that launching rockets is a metaphor for parenting a child. It takes a team of experts - physicists, astronauts, scientists, astronomers, dreamers, stargazers, and on and on and on to get a rocket into space. I’m pretty sure raising a child with autism is the same way.  You will probably have to work with a forever changing team of specialists, teachers, paraprofessionals, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, behavior analysts, speech pathologists, physicians, case workers, and on and on and on. It doesn’t just take a village; it takes a team of experts. These people partner with you and work hard to build and teach and shape and tweak and push and prompt and perfect and marvel at this tiny machine. Launching rockets involves preparation and communication and toleration and cooperation and so much love. We are building and designing something that will eventually soar through space. It has a specific path and purpose and particular way of seeing the world. We are doing a great work. When the day comes, we will all join hands, stand back, hold our breath and count backwards from ten. Ready for lift off.

Being a part of your child’s rocket launching team is the greatest honor of my life.

I’ll be seeing you in outer space.

With Love,

Your ABA Team

Learn more about us, our values, and our vision at ABA Parent Education