The Year the Curtain was Lifted

For 8 years, we have been convinced that something was "off" with my son. In those 8 years, we consulted several times, trying to figure out what was going on.

Each and every time we were sent back with the assurance that he was perfectly normal and any difficulties we were having were due to upbringing. Read: "You are failing as parents, it's all your fault if he's messed up, your parenting is clearly inadequate."

You can just imagine the level of guilt we developed through the years, or maybe you can't possibly. Each time, we left resolute to crack down on my son's misbehaving and war and mayhem would ensue.

Then, a few months or a year later, we'd stare at him and think: "It's NOT the parenting or at least not only that. Something is WRONG." And off we would go to another professional, to be more or less covertly blamed as usual and assured that my son would be just fine if we were just stricter.

It went on for 8 years, 8 years of conflicts, of rage on both sides, of slowly becoming despondent, both parents and child. Then, in his first year of high-school, my son threw in the towel. School was so stressful, painful, hated, humiliating, that he simply stopped going, and nothing could change his mind.

Distressed, we once more rang up the channels of the powers that be. This time, he had reached such a state of undoing that it was impossible to ignore any longer or pretend he just needed stricter parents. The teachers were at loss, the psychologists were at loss, we were at loss. So throughout this school year, 2009-2010, we slowly navigated the channels. It is harder to obtain an appointment with a child psychiatrist than to meet the pope. We dug our heels. We were patient. My son had dropped out of school at 12, there was nothing to lose anymore.

After seeing numerous professionals, a diagnostic was finally given, in June 2010. My son has an Attention Deficit Disorder AND Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), a form of autism. He also has a superior IQ. All these years of trying to convince the counsellors that he WAS different...

Emotions are mixed. Rage at having been blamed all along and at their failure to realize he needed help... Relief, to know it wasn't our fault after all, and that he's not behaving the way he does because he's a brat, a fear that was haunting me... Grief at having to accept that he will ALWAYS be different...

He's enrolled in special PDD classes next fall. And all the while, we tried to hammer him into fitting in school, when he was a square among circles, and caught hell for it from the merciless classmates.