There are many memes on social media about how our wonderful Skware Pegs can feel isolated, how they can feel trapped or unliked or that there is no one out there for them to like, but parenting the Skware Peg can feel quite isolating too – and I have written about this before (here and here)

I am lucky that I am part of a team – we (my husband and I) are a unit. We both deal with the ups and downs of parenting, we both share the laughter and the tears. However, I work part time and my main job is parenting. My husband works ridiculous hours as his main job, and so a lot of the parenting issues fall to me.

I have never been the most social of people – give me in depth conversations in a small groups rather than big nights out, any day – but having a child who didn’t do play dates, and now doesn’t play online, socialise or want to see many of his peers out of school exacerbates the issue. I do have some very, very good friends at school, but I don’t become part of a wider group because I can’t really do late nights, definitely can’t stay away overnight, and this then becomes a habit that is hard to break. My husband doesn’t have a busy social life either, but his job means that he has work colleagues and occasional travels.

On top of this is the isolating feeling that we are the only ones going through what we are going through. I have written before about my normal being different to your normal (here), and I am really feeling that at the moment! Our eldest was a door slamming, shouting teen. Our youngest withdraws until the stress causes migraines. I really miss the door slamming at times (something I didn’t think I’d ever feel when we were in the midst of it 7 years ago). So, even two siblings who have been brought up the same, in the same family have completely different experiences, and give us completely different experiences.

I could talk to another parent with boys who have ADHD and ASD. We could chat about our ups and downs, but they would be different. I am part of a small WhatsApp group where the parents all have children who are autistic. Some of there stories make me feel like a fraud, especially when it comes to stories of toddler years, because although it was tough at times, we had already gone through it once with a neuro-diverse child, so our normal was never ‘normal’, we just did what we had to do. We managed, we used coping mechanisms, and we were OK. Other stories make me feel jealous (which feels very odd to admit to). You all sleep all night every night in your own beds?? You get to go out and go away for weekends?? You can buy more than one brand of cheese, and have never felt the fear of standing in the only supermarket that sells the brand of cheese he eats and seeing an empty shelf??

I get that all parents have this, that no two children, even identical twins, will be the same, but children with additional needs have different milestones, have different targets, have different successes, so we can’t even look through a parenting book to see where we should be right now, as there isn’t a book written for us. So it gets hard because we can’t share our experiences like other people, and our social media feeds look like all we think about is ASD, ADHD, ODD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia or whatever. It’s always at the front of our thoughts, but the shares are to try and get people to appreciate what we do, day in, day out.

And I think that’s my point. No one has parented our children and their individual additional needs, so no one knows what we’re going through. No one knows our relief of a Sunday morning pre-school stress migraine only lasting 2 hours, with minimal vomiting at the end of it. No one knows our relief when a potential explosive anger episode diffuses with a slammed door and loud music. Other Skware Peg parents will have their own additional needs to deal with. They may be similar, but they won’t be the same. And the thought that we are the only ones going through this sometimes feels isolating.