22 Things a Woman with Asperger's Syndrome Wants Her Partner to Know by Rudy Simone

Author:Rudy Simone [Simone, Rudy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2012-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Partner’s words

“I liked her because she was intelligent, hard-working, good with finances and not chuckle-headed like so many other women I’d met.”

12

Her name isn’t Mommy…no matter how much she loves her child

As I mentioned in the last chapter, while she probably won’t ever be content being known as “so-and-so’s girlfriend or wife,” even being “so-and-so’s mother” might be an insult to her intelligence. Why must we take the back seat to our loved ones? It seems to us that male partners and children get to keep their identity while ours is sublimated. Being someone’s mother is a loaded condition, a loaded statement. Don’t think so? Think about it. The moment you hear the word mother, you immediately have a whole universe of iconic images and connotations in your mind, from Carol in The Brady Bunch to Stan’s mom in South Park. But whatever or whomever you picture, there is probably a certain amount of nurturing involved, as well as images of home and hearth. Did we ask for this? No. We might picture ourselves more like mother lions than mother hens. Does this mean we are bad mothers? Absolutely not—we can be fiercely protective, creative, communicative, just not conventional. Egads! Who would want to be?

My daughter has never been known (except by way of initial introduction) as Rudy Simone’s daughter. I, on the other hand, have been incessantly called Lena’s mother, more times than I could possibly recount, by teachers, other parents, myself as a point of reference, and by my daughter herself. Don’t get me wrong. I love being her mother. She is a gorgeous human being in every way imaginable. But as an Aspergirl, I rail against assumptions of both gender and motherhood, and norms that I think are disrespectful and illogical, which, at their core, were created to keep good women down. Of course, it seems that millions of hockey moms disagree with me.

If you have children with your Aspergirl, you may have assumptions about how moms are supposed to behave, and the inherent “mom gene” we are supposed to have. Well, guess what? We might have as much of that as you yourself do. She might secretly find the screaming, pooping infant fairly “useless” in the beginning and won’t get excited about parenting until the baby is able to interact in a more interesting way. Even then, when the kids fall down and scrape their knee, you may have taken on the role of nurse, cleaning the cut, administering the band-aids, comfort, and cuddles. That would not be abnormal for the partner of an Aspergirl. Does this make her a bad mother? No. She might have taken on a more traditionally fatherly role, helping with homework, creating projects for kids to do on weekends.

When I interviewed Aspergirls for the book of the same name, I found that sensory issues can make baby-raising difficult, whether it is due to incessant crying and screaming, pooping and vomiting, or other issues, like taking over all the time we used to devote to our interests or just chilling out.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.