walkitout | strength of language (Reply)

From:

I don't recall my exact wording; it was definitely closer to what I wrote above than your proposed rewording. I _might_ have said, "This kid is unlikely to ever drive" -- but I think I just said it flat out. Part of _why_ I am so adamant (<- and I do mean the underlying metaphor) about setting expectations is because the group of people around me is making what strike me as wildly unrealistic assumptions about what my kids are capable of. Speech occurs in a context, and the context I am dealing with is one that ranges from Rain Man style beliefs that my kid is a genius if we can just somehow connect with it to my kid will ultimately be completely normal we just have to get through these difficult phases. The whole envelope _has_ to move, or my kid is going to grow up feeling like a failure for failing to meet any of these inappropriate expectations.

And it's not just family. It was this kind of delusional thinking that placed my son in a mainstream kindergarten, a disastrous, stressful, in many ways wasted year that took a long time to recover from. I didn't have to fight to get an alternative placement; by February of that year, the school was desperately hoping I would _accept_ an alternative placement. If they'd offered it before going into kindergarten, I would have taken it then, but the team at that point had unrealistic and negative ideas about the classroom setting he ultimately was placed in, and so they were avoiding it.

Having tried being reasonable, I am now experimenting with being unreasonable. ;-)

ETA: Altho honestly, if I were really committed to being unrealistic, I'd predict a whole lot of other kids won't ever drive as adults either -- but it would unnecessarily piss off a whole lot of people and I just don't feel like coping with the resulting fallout.