Sometimes I wonder...

I wonder about myself a a parent, as though 'parent' is some kind of independently moderated constant concept.

I wonder if I would have been a different parent, if autism hadn't been thrown into the mix. I wonder if autism makes me a different parent (not better or worse, but different). And I wonder if the way I started parenting, before I knew much about autism, was the way I would have gone on...

Tomorrow, we're off to a birthday party. Our lovely, compassionate, welcoming school community have included Billy in a classmate's celebration. I feel very lucky to have found this village, and know that they are playing a huge role in Billy's development (in the unmeasurable human ways).

But I've already hit the red wine bottle trying to calm the old nerves in preparation for the event.

Will he cope? Will he understand? Will the subtleties of the house party experience evade him altogether?

While I've been thinking, it's sent me back to my own childhood. I've been struggling to remember kids parties in my own life. Perhaps I was one of those kids no-one wanted at a party.

There's no doubt I was not the rudder by which my peers navigated their way through social waters. I dreaded parties, never sure when to eat, what to do and where the toilet was (let's not even start with the issues around using toilets in places that were not my home...)

I know, as a child,  I sought the company of adults, and impressed them with my knowledge of obscure non-child-like subjects (are you sensing a pattern here...?) Perhaps my memory of kids parties is actually my memory of the space away from the children, who always seemed to be engaged in deeply pointless and unfathomably random activities.

Oh God, my kid didn't have a chance, did he?

So, here's my question. And it's not that much different to the ones I was asking in my head when I was a child.

Is everyone else worried about the things that I am worried about?

Do the parents of the perfectly NT kiddies sit at home, knocking back the red wine, (avoiding the work they should be doing... that's a whole new conversation), and thinking 'how are we going to make it through that birthday party?'

Do they wonder if their child will break something without ever knowing it shouldn't even have been touched? Do they fear their child might choose to take a leak in the potted palm? Do they dread that their child will stick out when it doesn't occur to them to greet anyone, or leave the birthday presents for the birthday boy to open?

I think I was lucky (or not) to have been gifted with a temperament that said, 'Just don't do anything spontaneous, in case it's wrong.' This meant my childhood was spent in detective like observation of everyone and everything. When I wasn't discussing foreign languages with the parents of my friends, of course.

Billy has a stunning temperament of his own. Sweet, calm, connected to his experience.  He is like a barge anchored on a choppy bay - unassailably himself, regardless of what life throws at him. He has a rawness about him that makes his days rich and deep, even in their mundanity. Even as a baby, I would swing from thinking he was sick, to knowing he was thriving, just by observing his reaction to the minutiae of his day.

And that is why I may need a little more alcohol before we go to this birthday party.

I hope the other parents have a parallel experience to this. It's tempting to think they're just thinking, 'Oh sweet, two hours off, what will I do?' But, I hope I'm not completely right... not because of their decisions, but because of mine.

Because (and here's the tail of the circle finally coming to grab onto the head), I suspect I would still be the mother who wanted to be at the party with my son, even if he wasn't on the spectrum. I think I may have always been the mother who wanted to walk alongside my kid as he broke out into his own world.

And I guess I've got autism to thank for making that kind of hovering, codependence possible.

Now, if only I could use autism to justify the red wine, the overwhelming desire to eat potato chips 24/7, the ever-present thought that if only cigarettes didn't kill you, I could smoke again...