I’m someone who’s very maternal and loves children. When I was in high school I asked a friend how many kids she wanted. When she said she didn’t know if she wanted kids, I was dumbfounded. It was so different to my dreams. I told her I wanted 4 kids.
I ended up having 4 kids, but I also had 4 stepchildren: 2 stepchildren and 1 biological child from my first relationship, then 2 more stepchildren and 3 biological children from my 11-year marriage.
In fact, I was a stepmother at 22 before I had my first baby 5 years later.
I loved being a mum. Not that it was without challenges.
I had issues bonding with my stepson when his parents were going through custody issues, I had problems with breastfeeding my daughter because of my milk flow, I felt suffocated when my baby followed me everywhere when she learnt to crawl, I’ve had to deal with bullying at school and all sorts of teenage dramas.
But generally speaking, I’ve had it pretty easy.
I was able to breastfeed all my children, after a few hiccups. I co-slept with all my babies so I wasn’t terribly sleep deprived.
They all did/do reasonably well at school. People have told me I was a patient parent and complimented me on my parenting. My kids were all well-behaved and well-liked.
If I had a parenting problem, I just applied myself and got through it.
It wasn’t until my son, Harrison, was 18 months old that things began to unravel for me as a parent.
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As someone who is a mother to 2 son's with Autism, I understand wholly with this mother. I constantly listened to my hubby tell me nothing was wrong with our son and when he got worse and was diagnosed at 3.5yrs, I felt guilty for not helping my son sooner. I told my hubby "our son needs help and if you don't support this, you can fuck off". Our next son was non verbal until 3.5yrs and needed intense speech therapy to learn to talk. I did leave my hubby. When he got counselling for himself, started medication and understanding his son's behaviour, we reconciled. We are now stronger than ever and strongly support Autism Awareness.
I’m sure this was hard but it isn’t what gas-lighting means. Gaslighting would mean he was actively setting up situations so that your son would misbehave and then telling you that you had triggered it or that the tantrums never happened. He’s not gaslighting, he’s denying that the behaviour is a symptom that of a bigger issue.