Imagine struggling with clinical depression, dealing with your demons from the past, and not getting any emotional support from family, receiving judgment and nastiness from others, and isolating yourself as a result while caring for a child with profound special needs. Add to that, caring for a typically developing child who needed her mom to be whole order to be the mom she needed.
To make things worse, the resources for autism parents in Ontario is shitty. Pure crap! You are going to be financially drained and pay for services that will only marginally help your child. And the wait lists for other services are long, and you are going to be given one excuse after another as to why you don’t qualify for funding.
And when you are finding yourself just unable to cope while you are watching your child with special needs, but has the potential to be quite high functioning regress because you can’t provide him the help that he needs anymore. Not to mention, the help he received didn’t help him much at all. That is because he has complex needs due to having mild autism and severe ADHD. While all of this was happening, I had gained 100 lbs over the course of a decade (after losing a tonne of weight and it started to pile on again after receiving the autism diagnosis). I slipped further and further into a depression. I isolated myself and clearly could not care for him and was not being the mother I needed to be for my daughter.
Between me battling my inner demons, the depression and the stress of being unable to care for my son anymore while he was clearly stagnating and getting worse- I feared I would snap! How would that be helpful to any of us, and whatever potential my son had would have been forever lost if I have. I knew I was heading towards a crisis point and it was clearly out there that my son required to be worked with literally 24/7 for him to do well.
Without going into the dirty details of what I had to do, I was able to have my son placed somewhere wonderful, a great school, away from home and where he is being worked with literally all the time. He was placed in September of 2017, and it is now 5 months later. He has made noticeable progression since then!! More than he ever has during the time we did what we could to help him. We see him for a few hours once a week. He is also much happier than he ever was at home because he is receiving the stimulation he needs that I could not possibly give him.
I am also able to cope with my depression and handle it well, and I am losing this weight finally. My daughter has the mom she needed all along.
So if you are in the same position I was and you are not sure what do to, all I can say is reach out and you can contact me if you like so I can give you tips. Don’t ever let anyone judge you. They have never been in your shoes. Those who tell you to try harder or that you are lazy don’t get it, because they have lived a very charmed life. Only those who know what struggle is about even if theirs are different, they will be empathetic. You do what is best for your child like I did, and what is best for you and the rest of your family like I did and tell anyone who judges you to fuck off!!
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