I would have written that our children often need firm boundaries, can’t handle excitement, choices or new things, need to control absolutely everything and may have emotional ages well below their chronological age.
And that we often have to parent them therapeutically, which means we can’t rely on traditional parenting techniques or advice.
We often do all this whilst dealing with frequent meltdowns, tantrums and violence or walking on eggshells to avoid those things.
We are often judged for this by teachers, classmates’ parents, extended family and others who know us who think our parenting is the cause of our children’s behaviour, not a response to their needs.
We often do all this without much of a support network because our children can’t handle play dates, we can’t maintain adult friendships because we can’t use babysitters and because we’ve chosen, to protect our children’s privacy, not to share their background/status. I’d add the professionals who are supposed to help us often know less than we do and say things like ‘children are resilient’ or ‘but he won’t remember’.
And then I’d add that unless you know what you’re talking about you should limit your interference to asking me if everything’s alright/handing me wine/giving me a hug.
And that’s on a good day. God only knows what I’d write on a shit one. 