How do you feel about the Holland story/thingy?

[expatinscotland]

You know, this one:
"I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a
disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to
understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this:

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip

• to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make wonderful plans. The

Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your
bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes
in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm
supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and
there you must stay.

The important thing is they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting,
filthy place full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new
language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you never would have
met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than
Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you
look around and you begin to notice Holland has windmills and Holland has
tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy and they're all
bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your
life, you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had
planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away â?¦ 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 go to
Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things
about Holland.

©1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley."

Cuz I HATE it.

I find it patronising and twee and condescending, like we all wanted 'perfect' children and should just be bloody grateful for the Rembrandts.

Everytime someone sends me this I know they're trying to be helpful, but sometimes I just want to write back 'Piss off'.

my husband is deeply concerned all the babies in holland know they should be in italy and that some of the babies in italy would prefer to be in holland

personally I do quite like holland but have always wanted to go to italy but tbh I would choose mexico as my destination of choice

hth

I've just been searching mumsnet for "welcome to Holland" for a friend of mine whose life has changed completely, for medical reasons. She is having trouble comping with that. Sometimes it helps to be reminded that other people are not living the life they would have chosen and that they have learned to live with it.

what i get from the 'Welcome To Holland' poem is how many special people i have now met because of my childrens special needs....people that i probably would never have met otherwise.

I've gone way past the shock horror bit of the 'grief' you face when the child you imagine...the parent you imagined you'd be...the life you thought you'd lead...shatters.

but i think for many this holland thing is how we feel in those early days....

has anyone read 'welcome to beirut'?...the sequell....about all the help/support YOU DONT GET?!

It-used-to-live-on-my-fridge-and-be-solely-responsible-for-getting-me-through-the-day

like eidsvold and TC I like Welcome to Holland. It did give me some comfort when dd2 was born and it still applies in many ways, I do think that it is very DS-specific in a lot of ways - dd2 isn't really particularly hard work or stressful ('Welcome to Beirut' doesn't apply to me, my life doesn't feel like a war zone anymore than the lives of other mothers of three young children), she is different.

(who else has seen the dreary movie 'Welcome to Holland' is from?)

Have-you-seen-this-one?---Not-the-same-type-of-thing-as-Welcome-To-Holland-of-course..

(Funny-re-Holland...I-am-irriated-by-most-things-sadly...but-the-euphemisms-in-WTH-did-not-annoy-me-they-made-more-sense-than-anything-else-did-during-a-very-dark-time.Thank-God...because-SOMETHING-needed-to-snap-me-out-of-the-short-"poor-me"-phase-that-I-was-languishing-in...It-certainly-wasn't-helping-my-kids!)

Where Are The Parents?

----------------
" In 1996, a parent named Sue Stuyvesant penned an essay
entitled "Where Are The Parents?" After a school official complained
that there were too few parents of children with disabilities
involved with the local PTA.
This powerful essay is included here in its entirety, for its
message should not be missed.

Where are the parents?

They are on the phone to doctors and hospitals and fighting with
insurance companies, wading through the red tape in order that their
child's medical needs can be properly addressed.
They are buried under a mountain of paperwork and medical bills,
trying to make sense of a system that seems designed to confuse and
intimidate all but the very savvy.
Where are the parents?
They are at home, diapering their 15 year old son, or trying to lift
their 100 lb. daughter onto the toilet.
They are spending an hour at each meal to feed a child who cannot
chew, or laboriously and carefully feeding their child through a g-
tube.
They are administering edications, changing catheters and switching
oxygen tanks.
Where are the parents?
They are sitting, bleary eyed and exhausted, in hospital emergency
rooms, waiting for tests results to come back and wondering: is this
the time when my child doesn't pull through?
They are sitting patiently, in hospital rooms as their child
recovers from yet another surgery to lengthen hamstrings or
straighten backs or repair a faulty internal organ.
They are waiting in long lines in county clinics because no
insurance company will touch their child.
Where are the parents?
They are sleeping in shifts because their child won't sleep more
than 2 or 3 hours a night, and must constantly be watched, lest he
do himself, or another member of the family, harm.
They are sitting at home with their child because family and friends
are either too intimidated or too unwilling to help with child care
and the state agencies that are designed to help are suffering cut
backs of their own.
Where are the parents?
They are trying to spend time with their non-disabled children, as
they try to make up for the extra time and effort that is critical
to keeping their disabled child alive.
They are struggling to keep a marriage together, because adversity
does not always bring you closer.
They are working 2 and sometime 3 jobs in order to keep up with the
extra expenses. And sometimes they are a single parent struggling to
do it all by themselves.
Where are the parents?
They are trying to survive in a society that pays lip service to
helping those in need, as long as it doesn't cost them anything.
They are trying to patch their broken dreams together so that they
might have some sort of normal life for their children and their
families.
They are busy, trying to survive."

By Sue Stuyvesant

yes...i like that one too!

(we are the parents who cannot go out to pubs on sundays and have family meals......or we are the parents who do go...alone...without our kids....whilst 'everyone else' appears o be there WITH their kids...all sat nicely....eating with knifes and forks....and sipping carefully from adult glasses. )

as opposed to our efforts to go out to a pub on a sunday- by a canal....and ending up with what seemed like everyone watching my 'normal looking' then 9 year old.....having a full blown autistic meltdown.....which ofcourse unfortunately starts the 'Tut,Tut,Tut....what that child needs is.......' or 'Parents today have no control'....etc comments

~~Empathy-vibes~~~-Cluttyjunkie.

My-DS-does-not-have-autism-but-the-behaviour-issues-make-eating-out-an-ordeal.---We-do-it-anyway-though..sometimes-I-wonder-why...

Do-other-people-ever-look-at-other-families-out-doing-stuff-with-their-children-(eg-bikeriding..but-infact-things-a-lot-less-adventurous-as-well)..and-think-"God-they-don't-know-how-lucky-they-are...their-children-are-growing-up-in-front-of-their-eyes-and-becoming-easier-to-handle-everyday...whereas-mine-is-just-becoming-harder-to-handle/heavier-to-lift...and-will-probably-live-with-us-forever,-so-no-nice-"restful-old-age/retirement-freedom"-to-look-forward-to-either..."

Self-indulgent-and-not-very-productive-I-know!

LOL at the in-character posting style, dalek

(Geekgrrl-I-have-no-choice-my-spacebar-is-fucked!)

(Sorry-I-DID-mean-to-put-f*cked-there![blish])

ditto the bike riding.....

my eldest (also autistic and adhd) is 13... and kids in his class have started calling for him on saturdays to 'hang about outside'...or worse still in the evenings....not only does this worry me as he's never wanted to go out- but wat i am more aware of with him is that he has no idea WHY anyone wopuld want to 'hang out'....so the gap is widening again. trouble is with the other kids i am suspicious of their motives...as many of them in class tease him in subtle ways...and i feel the overprotective mum syndrome cutting in...as ds1 is usually unaware of their mocking etc....

so when we are in holland...with the other dutchmen...its nice. its safe. i can trust peoples motives. and when i am on holiday away from holland i feel i have to interpret for my sons as they can only speak dutch

Hello all
I think that the child you have dictates which piece of writing you relate to. My second gorgeous boy has down syndrome and being immediately visually diagnosed, for me, Welcome to Holand,did strike a note. It didn't 'help' in the truest sense of the word but, to read that another parent had felt the same way as i was feeling was strangely comforting.

When we had the news of DS 3hrs after our boy was born they left booklets with us (as they do) and i read Holland while in hosp - at that time i cd relate to it cos its written for parents of DS children (its still early days for us - he's not 3 months yet ) my mom said at the time he was born that they're aren't enough words in the Eng lang to reflect what people feel and they're not sure of what to say to people like me who are holding brand new baby and are feeling pretty wobbly so i ended up comforting them as i was further ahead in terms of feelings and emotions so ....maybe Holland has a place cos i prob wouldn't read it now cos i don't need to!!!

I agree with those who point out it was aimed at parents of children with Downs syndrome. Very appropriate. Fab kids, fab people, just different. For other conditions Jimjams Welcome to Beirut might be more appropriate. For me, with ds, neither feels right to me.

And my NT two year old is more 'beirut' and my Aspergers five year old is a lot more 'Holland' atm!

it depends where you are and how you feel - i have great days when life is good then a visit from the experts for my DS upsets the equilibrium and i close the doors for a day to remind myslf that he's mine and just a baby!

The Holland thing made me want to scream. The differnce between NT and a severely disbaled child is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than ending up in the wrong country. Unless you've flown to Bagdad by accident.
It did feel patronising and like those comments 'normal' people give you 'you cope so well, I couldn't' or 'disabled children are like a special gift'
Argh