The Lowerarchy of Special-Needs Parenting

Source: Looking downward/Barb Cohen

In parent-tot music class, the parents coo over each other’s babies while maintaining an audible/internal dialogue that runs something like this: Your baby is adorable! But not as adorable as mine. Look at your baby, sitting up! How old is she? Let’s just establish right now that she’s older than my baby, which explains why she can sit up while my baby can’t. How sweet that your baby crawled over to pick up the tambourine. He sure can move! But I notice he can’t clap. My baby claps. The comparisons do not stop as we become more confident in our parenting. At preschool we take note of which children glued their snowman’s three body circles in the right sequence and which children can traverse the monkey bars. By high school, we have extra-curricular achievements, standardized test scores, and college acceptances. Through it all we either gloat silently or conceal our disappointment in the face of our children’s rank in the hierarchy.

Perhaps other parents believe that they are simply sharing the joys and travails of parenthood without judgment, but I do not believe it. They do need some reassurance that other children too are imperfect, and scrutiny of classmates can provide as much. But I also believe that childrearing is, at some level, a competitive sport. Our children’s accomplishments, particularly relative to their peers, validate our own exceptionality. They attest to our stellar genetic material. My child is the star of the basketball team! Or they attest to our stellar parenting. Your kid may be a better athlete, but mine exhibits far superior sportsmanship. Sportsmanship counts far more in character development than do middle-school basketball skills. Hah.

A problem arises, though, when we know our children will never win the contest. Standing at the playground, watching the other children surge ahead of our own, forces us to abandon the competitive drive and focus on honoring the gift of life each child possesses. We become freed from the poison of competitive parenting and discover a more mature, purer perspective. Kudos to us with the special children.

But not really. One of my biggest surprises in talking to parents of children with special needs over the years is that we look more humble, but in fact the game did not end. We merely moved to a new playing field. Our kids cannot compete against the “normal” kids, so we find ways to compete among ourselves. Instead of using the rhetoric of “better than,” however, we shift to “not as bad-off as,” as in “my kid is not as bad-off as yours,” or “at least my kid is capable of . . .” We have created a lowerarchy.

Most of the expressions of the lowerarchy are oblique. Most are silent or shared only with friends. It’s thoughts such as: At least my child has a friend. Or, even though my child does not have a friend, at least my child excels academically. Or, my child may be socially isolated and cognitively average, but at least he is verbal. Or, my child may not be verbal, but at least she is toilet-trained. Your child may be brilliant, but he’s still not toilet-trained.

Why? Why such solace in other people’s difficulties? Why such eagerness to sympathize but ambivalence about allowing ourselves to empathize? We share so much of our experience in common and we most certainly feel compassion and camaraderie. Yet we still insist on distinguishing our own situation from that of those around us. Things could be worse . . . and you over there are the living proof.

Maybe comparing our children to others invests us with a healthy perspective and even allows us to let go of some unproductive angst; a dose of reality can be a good antidote to self-pity. I am doubtful, however, that the lowerarchy always operates for such a benign purpose. That niggling impulse to resort to the lowerarchy is, I think, our basest form of reassurance. The farther from the “bottom rung” my child is, the closer to “normal” my child is. The closer to “normal” my child is, the more likely it is that she will grow up to function within the society whose structures and norms circumscribe us, like it or not—the more likely it is that she will grow up to validate at least some of my aspirations.

I do not offer a way to stop this lowerarchical thinking, even within myself. But I do believe that acknowledging the reality as well as its destructive effect on our children can help us fight the instinct. I will continue writing about this topic next week. For now, I invite you to comment and further the discussion. Thanks!