Reach Out

I think we would all like to imagine ourselves as non judgmental and accepting and open to one another's differences.  Oh how I wish this were true for the sake of my son right now.  I admit, even my own journey has been filed with judgements and thoughts and when you throw in the words "mental illness" it has certainly thrown out red flags.  We understand so little about it all.  It is so scary and hard to understand.

There are low levels of judgement and criticism, even fear, to different forms of mental illness.  Depression and anxiety are more widely accepted and tolerated although those who suffer from these illnesses endure a lot of judgement and criticism such as, "just pull yourself together...pull yourself up by your boot straps...don't let it get to you" statements.  I'm sure those are about as helpful to the self esteem of the mentally ill as candy to a diabetic.  Then you get into the more intense forms of mental illness, the scarier ones.  Yep, we are talking, bipolar, schizoeffective disorder and schizophrenia.  You want to get some weird looks from perfectly innocent strangers, say those words in public places.

I admit, I had a guy hit on me in a church group once and he told me he had schizophrenia...I ran for the hills!  In my defense, I was already dealing with being a single parent of an autistic kid and an ADD tornado girl so my figuring was, I had enough problems.  I don't know that if I didn't have these excuses if I would not have run for the hills anyway.

Here's the thing...I brought my son in to a local store here in town.  I know the woman who runs it and her son works there.  He is the same age as my son and goes to the same school.  When my son followed me in to the store I casually but enthusiastically made conversation by acknowledging that the two of them are in the same grade in the same school.  My son mumble an acknowledgement and I saw the other boy tense up.  I asked if he knew my son.  He stopped making eye contact with me and turned his head slightly away and answered "yes".  Everything got uncomfortable...tense...loud but unspoken.  This poor kid felt so awkward but he thought my son was a freak.  He did not want to be friendly to my son.  My son felt it but took it in stride, like it happens every day.  My heart broke.  I felt crushed.  I wanted to ask the kid in my protective Mamma Bear energy, "what in the hell is the matter with you?!?!",  but I knew.  I can't even say I blame him.  I might have been the same way at 15.  It's survival of the fittest in teen land.

The sad part is, that in my experience and recent education, it is just this isolation that aster-bates the symptoms of mental illness.  How can I convince my son he is not a freak or that he is not isolated and that people really do like him when this kid embodies a typical reception among his peers.  Can you imagine the darkness that would result?

How do we teach our kids? How do we teach ourselves, each other?  We are all connected, different, weird, freaks.  Some of us show it more then others. My son has an added excuse of autistic spectrum disorder which is more palatable among the community but still weird for his peers to understand.  We all have our quirks, our fears, our oddities.  We are all part of the human family, connected in our similarities and differences.  How do we reach out beyond our fears and judgements?  How can I teach the world to reach out and accept my son? How do I protect him from those who don't, won't or can't?