Just give a crying kid a dinosaur

I have a confession to make.
When I was a mother to just one precious little angel, I was a judgy mom.
I had my nose in the air and firmly believed there was no excuse for children misbehaving in public, or worse yet, children who ran their home.
Nope those parents just needed to look at me and my perfect child to know how to be a good mom

And then The Honey Badger was born.

My son wasted no time serving me a big ole slice of humble pie.

Now, to be honest, I spend my days worrying about how people judge me, or even worse, how they judge him. I've thought about having a shirt made that says "I know we're a shit show. Don't feed the animals and keep moving".

So today as I'm dropping off my son at speech, I see this mom and her son who are new to the therapy office.

I just want to hug her because I see all the same things on her face that I wore on my own when we started this journey with Wyatt.
Exhaustion.
Shame.
Anxiety.
Reluctance.
And all of it under the fiercest mama bear attitude.

As I was getting up to leave, her little boy started having a meltdown. For those of you not familiar with Autism or Sensory Processing Disorders, a meltdown is not a tantrum, though it looks like one. Its bigger and so much harder to contain. It's their little minds unable to process how to handle what's happening to them. The wires just arent connecting like they are supposed to.

I quietly grabbed a dinosaur that I had seen him watching earlier and set it next to him on the table, and it distracted him enough to calm the meltdown before it got too far.

The mom and I exchanged a thank you and a "solidarity sister," and I left.

When I got to the car though, it hit me.
Being a judgemental mom never once helped a mom in need. It never once deescalated a situation. It never once made another mom feel encouraged.

Being an autism mom though? It made me the type of mom who helps another mom without thought.
It has made me the type of mom who will hug another mom so she can cry, and I might just cry with her.

So I say all this because I think maybe other moms need to hear it. Are your kids perfect? Soak that in! You're blessed.
Are there moms around you struggling?
Shut the parenting advice off.
Stop thinking you can fix other people's kids.
Just be the person who gives a crying kid a dinosaur.

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