"My kids don't go to prom" and other things that are painful

 It has been very very long since I have written anything here.  I just skimmed through my previous posts.  I couldn't really read them because they are so painful.  However, I think I may have been in a similar place them that I am now which is that no one understands me AND I can't even explain it to people for one reason or another.  I finally got to the point where I realized there is almost no one that I can share this with without having unintended negative effects.

Having atypical kids is a type of grief.  Having never experienced really true death grief (I have been very fortunate), I can't adequately compare it but the way I will describe it is as follows:  No one gets it.  No one.  Just our family.  Strike that.  Just my husband and even then he has his own version of it, not the same as mine.  

Let's start with this... Growing up in my family, you toed the line.  We were probably textbook upper-middle class.  I took AP classes, I got good grades, I took the SAT five fucking times (once a year starting in middle school).  I went to a very competitive 4-year university straight out of high school.  My brother was the same.  We were comedically typical.  Now, I wasn't particularly happy but that didn't matter.  I was still expected to be the good child, the good student, etc.  That's what I did.

My children are, um, not that.  At all.  Not even a little bit.  None of them.  All of my kids are atypical for one reason or another.  My husband and I are not like my parents.  I was so depressed for so long that I definitely didn't want to make that mistake with my kids so we have always been very supportive and encouraging about who they are, even if it's not exactly popular or mainstream.  

For starters, none of my kids drive, not my 19 y.o., not my 17 y.o.  Maybe my 15 y.o. will.  I was banging down the DMV door the moment I turned 15.5 so that I could get my learner's permit.  I big chunk of why my kids don't drive is financial.  If we could afford to insure them, we'd have pushed the issue but we can't so we don't.  I don't have any "uh oh another newly licensed driver in the house" photos in front of the DMV.

H went to his school for atypical kids, with his severe learning disabilities and his mental health struggles, until he graduated and got a job in the deli at the grocery store.  A (the middle child) goes to an alternative school for a number of reasons, but to put it most simply, the anxiety of being a trans kid at a conservative school.  S is still at traditional school but he is not fitting in.  It's not bad enough for us to pull him out but it's not good.  I was going to say that facebook is killing me but it's not just facebook, it's everything.  My kids are difficult and moody - I don't have first day of school photos, let alone photos with cute little chalkboards.  My kids haven't been to any school dances.  We don't have prom photos, homecoming photos, nothing.  We haven't gone to visit colleges, no fun photos of that.  We most certainly don't have any "when you see your heart outside of your body as you leave your child at college" photos.  

So here's the problem... this is the sort of thing that most people don't realize is privilege.  People don't realize how painful it is to see other kids doing typical things when your kids aren't doing them.  That fact makes it extremely difficult to talk about with even the closest of friends.  Most people don't like to be called out on their privilege. I get it.  It's uncomfortable and embarrassing ("someone else saw a flaw in me that I didn't see first").  To tell my friends that "it makes me so sad to see all of these kids having such great, healthy, typical experiences," it translates into "why do you have to rub my nose in the fact that I don't have kids who have great, healthy typical experiences."  I don't want them to not have those experiences; I wish we had them.  

The worst part is that I absolutely cannot and will never not be able to think I ruined my kids into this.  If they didn't suffer from such a bad case of Shitty Mom Syndrome (SMS), may they'd be going to prom, too.  So in addition to not wanting to make my friends feel guilt, I also don't want to stir up any shaming they may be directing at me.  I already feel like a shitty mom, I don't need anyone else to tell me that my kids are fuckups because I'm such a shitty mom.  But when we are made uncomfortable (like when someone says that they're painfully envious of your kids' high levels of functioning), we often default to blaming/shaming those who have kids who are aren't that.

And that, my friends, is why I'm here.  This has been bouncing around in my head for years but I finally got around to it coalescing in my mind.  I am painfully envious of my friends with their typical kids.  I ache to have my kids go to dances and participate in extracurricular activities.  The idea of my kids not going to college of any kind right out of high school guts me.  And there is no one I can talk to about this who won't feel personally attacked by this.  In a way I am personally attacking ("stop showing of your typical kids' typical lives") but there is no way to remove that part of my ache.  I will inherently make people feel bad when I don't really (but kinda do) mean to.  

I just want normal kids with normal problems but that is not the hand that I was dealt or the hand that I created.