The part no one talks about.

There’s something that’s not talked about when it comes to parenting kids with special needs. It’s not talked about at all and it needs to be.

Love. Marriage. Relationships.

After seeing everyone’s beautiful social media posts on Valentine’s Day I thought about putting up the generic pic of me and hubby but it actually got me thinking about our situation and all the others just like us.

Parents of kids with additional needs and disabilities.

By posting a cutie patootie V-Day pic I didn’t want to pretend that it’s all butterflies and rainbows over here in our world. By ‘our’ world I mean all the relationships trying to make it while putting all our time and energy into our kids with disabilities.

What we go through. (no we don’t always GROW through what we GO through like the quote says..sometimes we just survive and that’s ok). It’s different and it’s hard. No it’s harder than hard..it’s almost impossible most days.

They say it will make you or break you. What if it fractures you instead?

It’s the lack of talking because you’re both so exhausted mentally and physically. The lack of sleep from ASD kids being up at all hours or more specific to us being in our bed for 8 years. It’s the situations that make you turn on each other and fight because you can’t take your frustrations out on the kids. (We are only human after all)

Most relationships are consumed by their kids there’s no difference there but these relationships are consumed by Specialist appointments, medication convos, school meetings and NDIS on top of it.

There’s no guide book or YouTube tutorial for the relationship side of it all ( no seriously..I’ve checked).

It’s easy to say make your marriage a priority but is that really a possibility when you have kids with additional needs? Where do we pencil that in? I can’t see an opening anytime soon. Is there a waiting list we could go on? I just don’t think it can be a priority in our situation. But it doesn’t mean we give up.

We’ve been through the bad news, the diagnosis and the emotional roller coasters of the early years. We now live the reality. We are all just riding the waves and hope things get easier one day soon.

You’re not alone and you are legends.

BB Xxxxx