Submitted by an amazing mum who follows our socials
In my fully neurodivergent household plus hyperactive dog, expressed emotions run high most of the time. Some days the distress and noise levels exceed the usual. These days leave me exhausted, second guessing my maternal suitability and frankly just wanting to run away. Inside the walls of my home I thought I could avoid any thoughts of embarrassment or perceived judgement from those around us, but apparently not. Actually I’m not sure why I thought somehow our family’s interactions weren’t obvious to the neighbours as we are on tiny inner city blocks and we can sometimes hear the neighbours fart in the quiet of the early morning.
One particular day when my husband and father of my two children was out of town for work we received a lovely big box from a large not to be named variety store. Contained within were new underwear, Lego and the next three books in the series I was reading to my kids. In my effort to balance the constantly front of mind ‘scales of fairness’ between my children, I suggested that maybe because child number 1 nominally ‘owned’ the first three books, child number 2 would be the looker after of these new ones. This did not go down well and prompted a full scale meltdown in numero uno.
Three hours later I was lying beside the now calm child. In the preceding hours I had done what I thought was a pretty darn good job of staying calm, getting two little people fed and the younger one to sleep. Sure we had a broken chair and a cracked pane of glass that ended up costing a fortune to repair, but we had ‘repaired and reconnected’ and I had not lost my cool. I was just extricating myself from my not quite asleep child, having read almost the whole of one of these new books and gained agreement that she could lay there alone while I tried to feed myself, when the door bell rang.
It was the police. Three officers in uniform.
While I got some shorts on - just in undies and T shirt by this stage - said child could not help themself from opening up the front door to ask them why they were here. Our first welfare check.
The reframing of, “Isn’t it great that we have neighbours that care about us and when they didn’t know how to help they called the police come and check on us.”, seemed to work for my child. And the answer of, “My brother got the books from the box that were meant to be mine” seemed to satisfy the police officers’ question as to why the upset. A pronouncement of, “Ah, big emotions”, a few clarifying questions later with the full and eloquent answers of my hyperlexic offspring and the police were on their way without ever coming inside.
I maintained my composure through the interaction and until after my child was asleep. That night I expanded on the, isn’t it great that our neighbours care concept with, isn’t it great that our neighbours care, that we have police with the resources to come and check on us and that we don’t feel threatened by the police (along with a whole lot of belly breathing and progressive muscle relaxation exercises) to try and calm my internal turmoil.
In following days however, I further reflected on the situation. Sure, it is great my family lives in a community with a police force that does have time to come and visit homes to check on the welfare of children and that their presence was in no way triggering or scary to me or my child, but our situation is one of marked privilege. My children and I are white, we live in a ‘good neighbourhood’ in a ‘nice’ house, I have the confidence and assurance of my education and professional standing and a multi-generational background of the same. Most neurodivergent mothers of neurodivergent children are not in the same position.
I don’t really know what I’m trying to say here and in the year or so since this incident, life has only got harder. There have been many more days I have just wanted to run away but there have been no more welfare checks yet. Only a matter of time no doubt.
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