Once again I had a conversation with a mother of a child with a diagnosis. Her son is now a young adult, and wants nothing to do with the church. He has hidden disabilities and was considered a behavioral nightmare throughout his childhood years.

Predictably, his mother shared how she is still dealing with the vestiges of bitterness left over from fielding the judgments of her peers and leaders from church... judgements against her son, and judgements against her parenting.

"Dealing with the judgment was almost as hard as dealing with my son!"

It's true. I experienced the same dynamic during those difficult years. It's a lament shared by many parents raising children with hidden disabilities.

​I want to remind the church of a few truths.

Christ died for us while we were sinners. (Romans 5:8) It's easy to have vision for "good people" to come to Christ. But the truth is, God doesn't just come for really nice, well adjusted people. He came for all of us, even those of us who are dreadfully broken, and emotionally unhealthy, and egads, even those of us who may parent poorly. So even if every single negative assumption you have made about my parenting is true, I am the object of God's attention, affection, compassion and love. As such, I should be yours too.

Christ Himself, the One who never sinned, didn't come into the world to condemn it. He came so that through Him, the world might be saved. (John 3:17) The focus is on offering a nail scarred hand up. Jesus came to destroy the works of the enemy, and you share Christ's mandate. (1 John 3:8)

Among other things the works of the enemy include marginalization, exclusion, the voice of accusation, diminishment and demoralization sown into the lives of entire families coping with hidden disabilities.

How will you serve to offer a hand up and destroy the works of the enemy?

There was a time in my life when rope courses petrified me. They are HIGH, and although harnessed in, the illusion was that I could fall. I’m not really all that athletic, and trying to maintain balance while leaping across boards suspended on guide wires was, well, terrifying.

So 15 years ago when I finally dared for the first time, I lied to myself in mental gymnastics pretending that the ground was only two feet down. I completed the course with great difficulty, but perhaps more importantly, I had a eureka. 

There were areas in my life where I lied to myself to get through, thinking it was necessary in order to survive the most challenging aspects of my life at the time.

One lie I told myself was that I couldn’t have a voice in the lives of other Moms until all my children were grown and all had chosen to love and serve God. This kept me less involved in transparent relationships, which was easier.

Another lie parents raising children with disabilities may tell themselves is that this season of child raising is so difficult that treating their spouses with loving deference and having a quality marriage is beyond their bandwidth and unachievable due to their circumstances. Maybe later. 

The truth was that the ground was indeed well over twenty five feet down, but fall, I could not. 

The truth was that God called me to good stewardship, and outcome was not in my hands. Vulnerability in honest conversations with other parents could have strengthened me and my friends who also struggled. 

The truth is that marriages can become more beautiful as parents offer grace to one another, look for ways to out serve the other, and capitalize on each other’s strengths rather than demanding perfection in each other’s areas of weakness because of our own perceived needs. Just like we accommodate our children to foster success, we can accommodate our spouses, focusing on strengths and capabilities. 

I stopped lying to myself and excusing my misalignment with the truth of God’s word. I began to spot the illusions in my life and renounce them. I’m harnessed. I’m not going to fall. 

God’s word is truth, and He says: 

The LORD directs the steps of the godly.
He delights in every detail of their lives.
Though they stumble, they will never fall,
for the LORD holds them by the hand.

(Psalm 37: 23-24 NLT)

I learned today that I am no longer afraid on a ropes course. I know that I am high off the ground, and that if I slip, I will dangle safely by my harness. I not only didn’t slip, but I went for a second round.

I got this.

My husband and I were discussing the recent tragic shootings in Oregon. This led us into a conversation of our own story that we captured in this podcast. As parents and caregivers, every day we deal with the implications of how our child's hidden disabilities are perceived and dealt with in the classroom. Our hope in sharing our story is to help highlight the differing perspectives on actions that are taken when challenges emerge in the classroom.

We invite you into the conversation and look forward to your comments.

P.S. Melanie mentioned this article by Dr. Steve Grcevich on the website Church4EveryChild during the conversation.

Somehow we maintain hope that putting our child with hidden disabilities in school equates to getting a break. In our exhaustion, we look forward to late August/early September while at the same time grieving the inequities and social rejections we anticipate await our child there. The illusion of a break doesn’t last long. I think my daughter’s school had my cell phone number on speed dial! 

One semester my daughter started a new science class, and I braced myself for the barrage of calls as she had never taken a class from this instructor previously. After a week of silence, I was convinced my daughter was hiding out in the bathroom! Finally, I dropped into the classroom after school to chat, and her teacher had plenty to say. My daughter was brilliant, engaged, and quite knowledgeable, a delight. “Of course, sometimes she...” I discovered this teacher’s son was also on the spectrum. She could see my daughter for her wonderful self, while handling beautifully her troubling behaviors.  

Of course, more often the calls increased in frequency like a speed train barreling towards a hairpin turn ahead on the tracks as the fall progressed. The illusion of a “break” vanished like vapor, as I found myself rescuing, advocating, trying to figure out “what really happened”, and holding my child accountable for both behaviors and expectations placed upon her. A helpful strategy during Autumn was to change my own expectations of what a break looked like. 

There is more than one way to take a break. When I’m preparing my yard to endure the prolonged Colorado winter, raking leaves and clearing raised beds, my muscles tire. I don’t sit to rest, rather, I switch jobs employing a different muscle group. Raking turns to sitting and weeding, or bagging. The variety allows me to continue progressing towards my goal, giving parts of my body a rest while using other parts, all the while continuing to work. 

Perhaps you had hoped starting the school year would provide some relief from the endless battles. In a way, it has, because you get to use a different skill set now than when your child was home all summer, interacting with siblings, and avoiding chores like the plague. Presently you are listening, negotiating, brainstorming for success, dreaming up clever ways to enforce accountability, and advocating. The weight of the imponderables is being spread across a greater audience, which lessons the likelihood of any given collaborator collapsing.

Recognizing the reality that your child is still challenged in this different environment and requires your near constant “re-thinking” of strategies to address those challenges can shift the blunt force of the brutal calls you receive from school into a forward thrust that ensures progress. 

Over time, you will indeed see the headway that allows your baby to weather the winter in time.

Innocently, my friend who successfully raised wonderful neuro-typical children posted a picture on Facebook of a wide leather belt with the words emblazoned across the photo, "The original ADHD medicine". The obvious implication is that good ole discipline will "cure" all that ails the ADHD child. The joke hit me as being about as funny as racist humor. It just isn't. Period. Ever. 

We know what it feels like to be “that” family.

For families who are raising children with authentic neuro-psychiatric differences, judgment is cast upon both the child and parents ad nauseam. The children are "misbehaving brats" and the assumption is that either: 

• Parents are too undisciplined and create mirror image children... 

or

• Parents are too ignorant to provide an acceptable level of accountability or training for their children.

Families raising children with hidden disabilities deal with the added challenges of child rearing AND the unrighteous judgments made against them. Judgment isolates families and undermines every ounce of support a typical family may enjoy facing normal parenting hardships. The net result is that families who actually need the most understanding and support, actually receive the least. 

For the countless re-posters of the Internet meme, don't think for a minute that such "humor" made at the expense of struggling families is throwing Big Pharma under the bus. Big Pharma is not listening. But someone is listening. All the families who are in your sphere who are dealing with neurology issues in their own homes are listening. And your message produces bad fruit. 

For the parent who is still ignorant of the reality of neurology’s impact on behavior and self control in their children, judgment may compel them to exert even more ineffectual pressure on their misbehaving child in the form of harsher and hasher discipline culminating in abuse. Discipline will never cure neurology.

For the parent who is aware that the challenges they face are resultant from a hidden disability, judgment through insensitive jesting may hurt and isolate them further. 

I fail to see the humor in either of these outcomes. 

My book about raising children with hidden disabilities is now available in print or Kindle format.

Create for yourself an imaginary godly audience who watches your interactions, and who wants only the best for you. I’m not proposing a galley of condemning stone throwers, rather, the voices of wisdom who speak into your life encouragingly. We are our own reality show before a great cloud of witnesses!

One day, those babies will be grown and able to process through not only their own behaviors, but also yours. Keep your behaviors pointing to a loving, grace filled God who also remains committed to standards of right and wrong. He is standing by to be your ever present help in time of need! ​

I have both friends and family with adopted children, and I understand that these precious wee ones are loved with the same fierceness as I love my own biological children.  But my friend raising her adopted child with paranoid schizophrenia mentioned recently that she does not have accusatory Mommy guilt. Sometimes Guilt attaches like a leech in hidden fleshy places, draining away parental confidence by injecting lies of personal culpability for the suffering of our progeny. That’s difficult enough. 

But then there are those who make assumptions about our mental health, and accuse us as parents raising biological children with hidden disabilities. For instance, I was enjoying a new friend a few years ago, a godly woman whom I respected. I am a professional level intercessor, meaning I get paid to pray for individuals and corporations, a job I immensely enjoy. God began giving me “downloads” daily to pray for my friend, a new experience outside of my employment. Although those who know me well, love me and consider me stable and emotionally healthy, she assumed I was obsessive compulsive by my attentive faithful intercession. Our relationship quickly crashed and burned. 

Not only was I misunderstood, but I was misunderstood in such a way as to emphasize in a searing way the pain my daughter feels routinely. My imaginary mental health issue made me an “unsuitable” friend for a “mature” Christian woman. God help us. They will know we are Christians by our love, remember? 

I’m trying to teach my children to rise above the stigma and reject the shame offered by society. In retrospect, perhaps it’s not such a bad thing to be considered guilty by association if it gives me the opportunity to stand by my children in solidarity. 

A safe gathering place of friends who understand

I was startled by my daughter’s comment. I reflected on the parents I have met raising children with Down’s syndrome. Not once has the word “selfish” ever occurred to me in describing those parents. But I also can only remember those parents telling me excitedly about milestones their child had achieved, or difficulties their child was facing. Perhaps these parents were “me focused” when they started their journeys, but now, their devotion and commitment were enviable character traits that causes casual onlookers like myself to drop to our knees admitting we are not worthy in comparison.

Out of curiosity, I had my 23 year old daughter with hidden disabilities read the post and share with me her insights. “I think this mother is selfish,” was my daughter’s first observation. “She thinks raising this child is about her, but it isn’t.” I saw pain in her expression.

At first, navigating the unrighteous judgments leveled against us as parents raising children with hidden disabilities (including accusations of selfishness) can knock us off balance. We are still fighting our own internal vows about child raising, what medicinal intervention, nutrition and accountability will look like in our homes. Our own blame-based behavior models may still be intact, not fully grasping the impact neurology has upon our challenging child. But once we topple those idols in our minds, we enter the maturation fast lane. It’s no longer about us, our ideals, or the impression our parenting (or even our advocacy efforts) make on another. 

Our focus shifts to our child whose struggles may impact them for a lifetime.

• What language choices empower my child the best? 
• How can I shield my child from unrighteous judgements? 
• How can we, as parents, use our own transparency, honestly and vulnerability to both protect and advocate for our child? 
• How can we obtain the best interventions in spite of our limitations? 
  

The day will come when our children grow up and read everything we wrote about how difficult it was to raise them. They already fight self loathing and feelings of worthlessness; after all, according to the other voices in their lives, they do not measure up.

I believe her intent was to offer empathy to other struggling parents who are indeed impacted by raising children who present profound challenges to entire families who struggle to cope with the demands. The fact that in her own need, she is willing to invest in the lives of other parents tells me she is focused on others, in addition to her children, and not on herself.

But additionally, I will take my daughter’s comment to heart, remembering that I am here to teach my children that they are worth every ounce of effort expended on their behalves. It’s not about me, no matter how much raising my children with hidden disabilities impacts me. 

A safe gathering place of friends who understand