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SN children

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Original poster

Welcome to Holland

47 replies

Imaginosity · 17/05/2016 19:19

www.our-kids.org/archives/Holland.html

When I read this last year after DS was diagnosed I could not relate to it at all - it seemed like the end of the world and I was so depressed.

Today I read it and it made sense to me. I collected DS today from school and he was in a great mood - his teacher said he'd been really good all day, he played with a boy from the street and interacted with him a good bit of the time instead of wandering around in a dream world. There are things to look forward to. I'm planning a holiday in the summer which DCs are excited about and DS is excited to be getting a new baby brother.

I never thought I'd ever feel this way.

OP posts:

enterthedragon · 24/05/2016 09:02

A previous pregnancy that ended badly taught me that the only thing inevitable in life is death, i grieved for the death but still I am happy with life.

IMO you don't have to accept Holland as a final destination.

zzzzz · 24/05/2016 10:00

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

theDudesmummy · 24/05/2016 10:12

There is a Welcome to Beirut version that seemed to me for quite some time to be far more apt. But I am no longer so catastrophising, just worry a lot.

blaeberry · 24/05/2016 10:46

Been to Rome - the locals (including Taxis') driving is scary. Came down with morning sickness there and couldn't face pizza or pasta...

MaterofDragons · 24/05/2016 14:17

Went to Rome and and Amsterdam and loved both (particularly Rome). Would love to take my sons there.

I definitively mourned, still do some days, it will take me longer than most to get over it.

MaterofDragons · 24/05/2016 14:18

Definitely not definitively

Original poster

Imaginosity · 24/05/2016 23:36

I 'mourned' not because I want a perfect child - but because I felt sad on DS's behalf knowing it was likely he was was going to struggle more in life because of his autism.

I think because I had bad social anxiety as a child and teenager I felt I could anticipate how DS might feel, being on the outside, and I don't want that for him - in face I feared it for him.

I kind of hoped my child would have an easier time of it than I did - the one thing I hoped when DS was born was that he'd be a bit more social than me and it turns out he's less social.

I know DS might end up being ok and not having the problems I did - but it's a worry.

OP posts:

tabulahrasa · 25/05/2016 00:11

My DS was 7 before anyone ever mentioned ASD to me, it had literally never crossed my mind as a possibility...so yes, I did mourn, because at the time, it felt like I had lost who I thought he was.

Suddenly I had a child who wasn't who I thought he'd been the day before and everything I was having to deal with was completely alien to me.

I needed somebody to go, you know what, it's ok to feel like that, it'll work out, but it's ok to feel like that just now. Nobody ever did and welcome to Holland was the first thing I found that did.

Now, I genuinely don't know exactly what it was I was mourning, because he didn't change at all, children never turn out how you imagine and I don't even really know what it was I expected him to be that he isn't - because he's just him.

But that's 13 years later, then it did help me.

signandsingcarols · 01/06/2016 12:30

It's interesting, I too hate welcome to Holland, (perhaps 'landing' with a diagnosis was a real relief for us in a way?), I loved the beirut one and I loved the one polter shared too.

It's odd because althou I would not change ds's ASD as it is part of him I think I would change dh's physical disability, it is also part of who he is, (in terms that it has shaped his life and experiences and thus who he has become,) and I would not want to change that, but I would because of the pain that it causes him. I really struggle with that , when I hold him because he is weeping with the pain of his condition, (on top wack of non opiates) I would have it gone in an instant... but then maybe that is focusing on me... not him... I think we would both agree that there are so many bits about the condition that we would say 'meh' about, but the constant pain is lousy.

StarlightMcKenzee · 01/06/2016 13:05

I don't like Welcome to Holland because it is usually delivered by a caring carrot as an instruction to 'accept your child's disability and don't you dare ask us for anything otherwise we'll accuse you of not doing'.

Jasonandyawegunorts · 01/06/2016 15:21

You can make Holland better by using the "Find and replace" function in any word processor...

When you're eating have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation Breakfast - to Porridge. You buy a bunch of Fruit and make your wonderful plans. The spoon. The bowl. The bits of banana in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Muslian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go to the supermarket. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "here is your to muesli."
"muesli?!?" you say. "What do you mean muesli?? I signed up for Porridge! I'm supposed to be in Porridge. All my life I've dreamed of eating Porridge."
But there's been a change in the breakfast plan. They've landed in muesli and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease (Like Swindon). It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new Fruit. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of potatos you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Porridge, less flashy than Porridge. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that muesli has raisins....and muesli has weird kinds of Seeds. muesli even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Porridge... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had eating. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's what I was supposed to eat. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to eat Porridge, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about muesli.

StarlightMcKenzee · 01/06/2016 18:21

Very clever Jason. I may just have to have a go.

youarenotkiddingme · 01/06/2016 22:33

Another who hates the poem. To me I didn't land in the wrong country. That indicates something 'wrong' with DS.

Instead I like to think I just bought the wrong guidebook - eg the nt parenting manuals don't work but there are plenty of great resources/books out there to guide you around disability. For me it's the ASD/sensory resources.

DigestiveBiscuit · 02/06/2016 22:01

youarenotkiddingme - I think the poem is very much about that parents of SEN children need a different set of manuals; on how the SEN system works!

troutsprout · 03/06/2016 10:17

I hate that poem too
It assumes so much.
And I hate that disability is another country. That's just effin offensive. Do people really have that long term vision thing for their kids?
I'm just happy that in this minute , this hour, this day, they are both ok and are still good happy people
Ps.. Hi everyone! >.. Haven't posted in ages... But still read from time to time (obviously)

youarenotkiddingme · 03/06/2016 10:57

In agree it's offensive trout if you assume Italy is the child you give birth too then you assume Holland is not a child. But you do get to go to Italy - you do get a child - you just need a different guidebook to find your way around it!

PolterGoose · 03/06/2016 12:12

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Jasonandyawegunorts · 03/06/2016 12:19

To be honest i don't understand the whole "grieving for the child i didn't have" thing at all.

Frankly i find it ridiculous, i mean that in the nicest possible way. It's like "my child was born without the hair colour i wanted, i'm grieving for the hair he didn't have."

StarlightMcKenzee · 03/06/2016 12:27

I guess some might grieve for a child of the 'wrong' sex, but quite frankly I've always thought that if that was a possibility they were irresponsible conceiving a child.

There are no guarantees that you'll get a child of a certain type. If you can't live with the child you are given, however they present, then you have no business having a child imo.

Sounds harsh perhaps, and I think all this antenatal testing sends a message that we can some how control outcomes or mitigated against those we have less of a preference for, but the reality is that you get the child you conceive and there is no 'other version' of that child.

NoHaudinMaWheest · 03/06/2016 12:54

We do live in a society which assumes everyone is ablebodied in every way though. If you haven't personally faced the fact that isn't so before your child forces you too, I can appreciate that it would be something of a shock and readjustment would be necessary.
I was disabled myself before I had dcs. I never assumed they would be 'fine'. I did worry about how I would cope with any additional needs though. I quickly learned that the things you worry about in anticipation are rarely the things you actually have to deal with.

MaterofDragons · 03/06/2016 19:50

Some harsh posts here. We all have different opinions about the poem, I get that. I don't get the judgements on parenting.

Which parent here can't live with the child/ren they have? I've not come across any.

tabulahrasa · 03/06/2016 22:49

"but the reality is that you get the child you conceive and there is no 'other version' of that child."

Yes, but that wasn't how it felt for a while.

I had had a little bit of experience with people with autism and my understanding of it didn't include children like my DS (he was eventually diagnosed with Asperger's) so within a very short period of time I went from the parent of a child who was struggling a little bit socially to the parent of a child with a lifelong disability.

So it really did feel like I suddenly didn't know my son at all because everything I thought I had known for the first 7 years of his life was based on wrong information.

Of course he was actually the same child and within a couple of years I couldn't even understand how I could have missed it, but I did and at that point it really did feel like somehow he'd been taken from me.

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