Impatience in healing autism is something that often comes up in my work with parents who are healing their children from autism. “We want our children to thrive now!’’ I get it, but we parents, we get frustrated with impatience.
However, many times I look at impatience a little differently. When I’m impatient about something, I know my impatience is telling me that I really want it and that always makes me smile and feel good, at least for a few minutes. Then what I do is I start to notice my thoughts. They’re usually something like there’s a risk to even dream, and I get a little scared. Then I think, “I might be down, and what if it doesn’t happen?’’ Then I start thinking, “Oh, it’s taking too long.’’ Then finally, I’m usually like, “Oh, I did something wrong because it hasn’t happened yet.’’
Have you had any of these thoughts about healing your child from autism? The path to your goal of healing your child is to feel better. Now that might seem a little bit unusual. You might be thinking, “How can I feel good when my child with autism and they can’t sleep or they can’t eat or they head-bang or self-injure themselves?’’ Ask yourself, “Why do I want my child to heal? Why do I want her to get better?’’ Listen to those thoughts. We want our children to feel better because we don’t feel better. The flawed premise is that we’ll feel better only when we get what we want.
Sometimes my thoughts on something will go like this, “Okay, if I get this and then this and then this, then I’ll get what I want, and then I’ll feel better.’’ As you can see my end goal is really, that I will feel better. We want our children to heal because we will feel better; we’ll feel better as parents, better as a family, better in just about every way.
What is your child doing right now that makes you smile? There’s something, even if it’s small, there’s something joyful about your child right now. Focus on that. The joy is in the journey.
