Car Chat

This is one indisputable truth of parenting: kids live to ask the most difficult questions while you are operating a motor vehicle.  They all have some innate kid sense that tells them, Look! Mom is attempting to navigate a construction zone while trying to avoid getting sideswiped by that 18-wheeler!  Now is the perfect time to ask a really difficult question!

Both of my kids decided to ask The Question while sitting in the back seat of my car.  You know the one I am talking about. It goes like this:

Kid: Mom, where do babies come from?
Mom: From the hospital, sweetheart.
Kid: MOM! I know that! Before the hospital? How do they get to the hospital?
Mom: Babies come from inside their mother.
Kid: But Mom, how do the babies get INSIDE their mother?
Mom: Oh, thank God! I think I'm getting pulled over by a state trooper! A reprieve!

The other day, I was with the Son of Never Stops Eating, running errands after work.  He was talking about his current two loves, The Loud House and his latest heart's desire addition to his Lego collection.  I was practicing good defensive driving skills by focusing on other drivers and road conditions and not really paying attention to him, when suddenly he asks me, Mom, am I disabled?

I had no idea he even knew that word. I've been wondering when and how I should talk to him about his autism.  He's made comments throughout the years that tell me he knows that he's different from other people.  At the same time, he's rarely expressed strong emotions about those differences. 

The concept of disability and the diagnosis of autism both have many strong feelings and philosophies attached to them, and that makes what seems like a simple question really hard to answer.  I decided to employ a strategic mom ninja move that I learned from the Grandma of No (listen up, young mothers- hot parenting tip coming your way!)  which is called "turn the question back on them". Mom, where do babies come from?  Well, sweetheart, where do YOU think babies come from?  See how that works? 

What do you think disability means? I asked him.  It means there's something wrong with you, he told me.  Do you think there's something wrong with you, I asked him.  Sometimes I think my brain is broken, he responded. I'm afraid people are going to bully me. I don't want people to make fun of me.

Inside my own brain, I was debating how complicated to make this.  He does have a documented disability.  But I don't think that his brain is broken- his brain works in a different way than my brain does, or the Teenager's brain, but it's not broken. How do you convey to a young teen with autism that you don't perceive him as broken but wonderfully different, and at the same time acknowledge that his life will likely contain challenges that may be difficult to overcome because of those differences? How do you do this while driving a car?

Your brain isn't broken, I told him, as I pulled into a parking space and we walked into the store. It just works in a different way, and that's not a bad thing.  He smiled at me briefly, and then asked the store clerk if she had ever seen The Loud House- ten sisters and one bro all under one roof!

I know that this is a conversation that has just started with him- the beginning of many conversations, as he moves from adolescence to adulthood and starts asking why his life is on a different trajectory than his sister's or some of his friends.  The answers aren't going to come easy, and I'm sure many of them will be discussed in the car.