A woman shared how she hates being the parent of a disabled child from her husband’s previous marriage.
Here is the story:
My son is 16, and he has both a genetic disorder and autism. Maturity-wise, he’s maybe half his age. I hate my life. I hate it so much.
There’s never a day where it’s easy. You don’t get to have the same payoffs as other parents, where you experience their fun milestones in life. There no real future to plan for. There isn’t any hope that he’ll be able to live independently.
I’ve been raising my son since he was 4. His bio mom has almost nothing to do with him. She doesn’t pay child support or her half of his medical bills, and she never bothers to ask how he’s doing medically or in school. I’ve had to make so many sacrifices for a child that isn’t mine. My husband is wonderful and we have a great relationship. He is equally as miserable.
Every day is like whack a mole with his issues. We have to micromanage everything because he’s not capable of keeping track of anything on his own. He is charming in his own way, and that leads a lot of people to believe he’s capable of a lot more than he is, which means even more work for us. I am so tired of having to keep track of every school assignment. Of making sure he takes his medicine 3x a day. He’s been taking meds 3x a day since he was three and he still can’t remember to take it on his own. We have to make sure he puts on clean clothes, brushes his teeth, etc because he won’t do any of that himself. We have to ban food from his room because he will seriously sleep in food waste. He still can barely tie his shoes, which makes others at school uncomfortable because he doesn’t understand boundaries, on and on.
We have zero support system. It’s hard enough to make friends as an adult, but add in a child with severe disabilities? Our families live very away. My husband’s parents have never once showed any interest in having their grandson visit without us present. They don’t even offer to let us go out to dinner alone. The only break we ever have is while he’s at school. The last time we had any time away from our child was almost three years ago.
It’s absolutely miserable, who knows if we’ll ever be able to have him live outside of the house. It never ends. I am tired and at the end of my rope and I hate that every morning I wake up and wish I hadn’t.