MAKING JUDGMENTS

The parent of an autistic child perpetually resides on a rickety roller coaster and never gets to stand on the ground and be a spectator. With luck, a partner is also teetering in the seat, but that doesn’t change the arduous task of knowing what to do. Should I react? Did I over-react? Did I do the right thing? Am I making the situation worse? What do I do next? 

Angie and I talk about the accusation I overheard in the teacher’s lounge—that I was spoiling Justin with the way I treated a meltdown. Angie is accustomed to the minefield. I want to know how she does it. 

“The grocery store is the worst! Sometimes Justin pulls a whopper of a tantrum. Kicking, screaming, all of it. Because he wants candy in the checkout line.” 

(Of course, it would be the checkout line instead of a nice quiet aisle in the coffee section.) 

“There isn’t one right thing to do. Sometimes it works to promise a treat later. Sometimes I have to raise my voice. Sometimes I give in and he gets the candy. There’s a limit to how much of a scene I’m willing to make. Sometimes I just figure it isn’t the right time for teaching a lesson. But no matter what I do, every time I look up, I get THE LOOK.”

Oh crap. I know the look. I’m guilty of the look—in the grocery store, at school programs when my own child was performing and someone else’s child was disrupting the event, and a lot of other times. Without even opening my mouth, the look I gave shouted the reproach: “CAN’T YOU CONTROL YOUR KID?” Was it years or mere weeks ago when I last gave The Look? I don’t want to know the answer.

One day I was searching online for cheap business cards. I encountered a site that sells cards for parents to give out in public: MY CHILD HAS AUTISM. I was appalled that a market exists for such a card. And we, the onlookers, the judgers, are the ones to blame. Not the parents.

I like to claim I won’t judge someone until I actually walk in their shoes. I’m kidding myself. I judge even when I don’t know I’m doing it. That’s no excuse. I will never have the entire backstory. I will never have enough information to judge what goes on in someone else’s life. I know this truth. I’m still working on living it.

I judge, you judge, we all judge. 

Let’s stop.