The unexpected offer
I had a phone call this week from someone who has, in the past few years, become closely connected with my husband’s family. She rang to ask me about Christmas presents for the Wombats. We chatted briefly. Then she offered words which I found very hard to take.
“Oh, you poor thing. We know that it must be so hard. Particularly with Dancing Wombat.”
Oooh, my back was up already. Dancing Wombat is often the easiest to deal with. You have no idea, do you?
On she went.
“We think about you all the time. If there’s anything we can do to help, anything at all…”
I have met this lady a few times. She seems nice, and I know she is the caring type. However, beyond this, I scarcely know her. Since becoming connected with my family-in-law, she has spent barely an hour in my kids’ company. She doesn’t know them. For many years, the other part of the “we” has preferred the interactions to be on his terms. When they weren’t, he chose to withdraw.
So this phone call set me thinking.
Relationships don’t just start up again where they fell away
We’ve all met superficially solicitous people. Occasionally, we might even be one of them ourselves. I know I can be. This is how it goes when you’re being superficially solicitious:
“I often think about you.” (I do – really.)
“I’d do anything to help you.” (Well, maybe not anything.)
“It must be so hard for you.” (I genuinely want to express my sympathy, and don’t know how else to do it.)
“I know what it’s like to have…” (Insert relevant condition, number of kids, life situation etc. Actually, I have no idea at all what it’s like, but I can sort of – maybe possibly, if I twist my brain – imagine what it must be like on a good day…so I’ll say it anyway.)
These are the friends and family who sort of drifted out of your life once your child’s – or children’s – special needs became apparent. These are the ones who couldn’t cope, or didn’t know to go about coping. So they found it easier not to have to cope.
With these friends and family, you tried to maintain a relationship, but eventually you found it too hard. Why? Because the more immediate needs of your own family were so all-encompassing physically and emotionally that you had nothing left over to give.
They seem to resurface periodically – typically birthdays and Christmas. There’s a sense of obligation, maybe guilt, perhaps even loss for what they have missed over the years.
However, relationships aren’t like a computer that you turn off and restart regularly, finding everything as you left it. No. The computer crashed. You need to reload the files, put on a new virus scanner and install new firewalls to protect you from the trojan horses that get behind your defences and bring you down. It takes time and effort, trying to rebuild what was lost. And it’s never quite the same.
Those people don’t know what it’s like. Maybe you see them once or twice a year. They never phone and they never drop by. Perhaps you gave up trying to make contact years ago when your efforts were met with either silence or rejections. Eventually, you had better things to do with your time than keep trying.
Perhaps you got tired of those people miscounting your children, forgetting – or deliberately cutting out – the one who most needed remembering. And you became worn down by their insistence on doing things their way, not the way that worked best for your family’s needs.
It can be hard for people to interact with special needs kids. To start off with, not everyone is comfortable with kids anyway. That’s fine. We special needs parents get that. But what we also get is the people who make an effort. We lose our faith in those who don’t even seem to try.
To these family and friends: we know you have some sort of superficial idea that life is challenging. For us, ‘challenging’ runs through our veins. Sometimes, the “high functioning” kids who you assume to be “normal” (you might not know about neurodiversity) can be the most challenging, the hardest to understand, the most frustrating to deal with. We know you can’t understand this, because you’ve never actually spent enough time with us to even catch a glimmer of these experiences.
Are you for real??!?
Thanks for the offer to “be there” but we’re long past needing it. We’re managing. The one time perhaps, when we really needed help – really, really, needed it – you asked us if we couldn’t get someone else to do it. And you know what? You were last on the list anyway. We’d already asked everyone else.
And so back to that bemusing conversation. I’m struggling to understand what she meant when she said ‘We think of you all the time’, that she knew how hard life is and that they’d do anything to help.
As far as I’m concerned, I’ve seen only scant evidence over the years of the concern that was now gushing down the phone. The phone call left me with no small amount of emotional turmoil and a degree of bitterness, which I thought I had resolved.
These are some of the thoughts that flashed through my head.
Is your offer genuine or merely polite? And more to the point, who is really making the offer? You, the one who’s calling me, or your friend who walked away? Why is the interest and concern being expressed now when so little has been shown before? Is it really worth bothering with this occasional and superficial exchange of pleasantries?
How should I respond? Frankly, I don’t have the energy to make an effort with you now. But I don’t want to be rude to you.
I just don’t feel that your friend can waltz blithely back in as though his harsh words, disregard of the special needs child and years of absence never happened.
I’m finding this phone call disruptive. Perhaps we’re used to your being out of our lives. I don’t want to open myself up again to the hurt caused.
Sadly, this situation is not unusual. I’ve heard of many families with special needs children who have friends and family withdrawing from their lives because they can’t cope with the special needs. But the social courtesies are deeply ingrained, and we reply in kind. Really, that’s kind of you. We appreciate the thought.
But do we really? The words stir up sentiments best left behind. How do we balance politeness with pragmatism? Should we even bother?
How do you manage those offers?
It can be hard expressing our feelings to the people who most need to hear them. The “absentee” in my husband’s family doesn’t understand our perspective. Also, my husband and I have differing opinions on the value of even trying to help him understand. As this person is his close relation, and there are other complex family dynamics involved, I feel I must accept my husband’s views.
But perhaps others are able to have this conversation. Or maybe they can put things in writing. Maybe they have a mutual friend who can subtly make suggestions on their behalf. These situations are highly personal, and we have to deal with them on a case-by-case basis.
But if it’s possible to create some accountability, you could try the following approach.
If you really mean what you say, here are some suggestions:
Do – don’t just offer. If you’re not sure about what to do, you could always drop off some groceries. The staples. Nothing fancy. Alternatively, do drop off something fancy! Just not ice cream. It might melt before we get home.
Please, don’t say you know how hard it must be. You just don’t. You could say that you can’t imagine how hard it must be. Or simply, that it must be hard. Because then, yes, you’re right. It is.
Do you really think about us all the time? It’s just that we have little evidence of this. Even if you do, how could we possibly know? So phone occasionally. Send an email to the family address. Drop by when you’re in the area.
Be open about your difficulties understanding. It’s okay to say you find it hard. We do too, and we live with these special needs 24/7. So, in comparison, you’re doing okay. And we’re happy to give you some pointers to help you understand and manage a little better.
Please respect that healing wounds takes time. If you’ve drifted or walked away, and you’re drifting back, it’s important for you to understand that there might be many hurts which need healing. The reconciliation process takes time and dialogue.
We don’t want a verbal or gift-wrapped band-aid. That might look nice, but it won’t really do anything for a fractured relationship. You get out of a relationship what you put into it, so while we hear your words, actions speak loudest.
Photo by Jennie Irving
