build self-respect on accepting your abnormality and knowing you’re competent to make good decisions about it, regardless of what others think or how severely it limits you.
You may win no competitions, but you should take pride in the tougher task of getting something done when there’s lots of pain and no glory. So let go of your secrets, fight shame with twelve-step and other aphorisms, and give priority to your spiritual growth, whether you do it by steps, religion, specialized ramp, etc.
Quick Diagnosis
Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:
• The strength and recovery your hard work entitles you to
• Delicious, boring normalcy and averageness
• Outstanding accomplishments and reliable performance to offer your friends, family, and employer
• Confidence in a future when you can count on being in good shape
Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:
• Know how far you can push yourself without causing relapse
• Know whom to call and what treatments to try in case of relapse
• Take pride in your performance, regardless of how it compares with others’
• Accept no nonacceptance
• Assemble a circle of approving, helpful people
Here’s how you can do it:
• Educate yourself about your disability and the risks and benefits of treatment
• Don’t let fear or shame stop you from doing what’s necessary to treat it and lead your life
• Educate people about your disability, your needs, and your standards for dealing with it
• Select friends and employers from the accepting
• Do not make it your responsibility to convert the nonaccepting
• Audit your performance regularly in terms of what’s possible, day by day
Your Script
Here’s what to say to a nonaccepting person who thinks you could do better.
Dear [Me/Relative/Boss/Disability Examiner],
I value your opinion about my [performance/efficiency/seemingly endless sick time], taking into account the [pain/unnerving tremor/fatigue/drooling] that my disability may impose [regularly/unpredictably/every St. Swithin’s Day]. I take pride in knowing the limits of my disability and using treatment well to keep myself as functional as possible. I’ve heard your concerns, but I believe I’m doing well, considering [do NOT insert explanatory details, it’s too defensive] problems I’ve experienced and discussed with my doctor, but wish to keep private. I expect to be able to do more as my recovery continues.
Did You Know . . . Life Is a Special Olympics?
Many people believe Olympic competition is particularly meaningful because it draws together the best of the best in the whole world and validates their excellence using the most advanced measurement techniques available. In their minds, there is no achievement equal to being an Olympic champion (at least until that year’s games are over and they forget that ice dancing ever existed).
The reason we often say, and truly believe, that life is a Special Olympics isn’t because we mean to degrade the achievements of those involved in the actual Special Olympics or those games in any way. It’s because the actual Olympic games aren’t really a fair fight; some countries have more money than others, some athletes get the better performance-enhancing drugs, and everybody cares a lot less about national glory than springboarding a win into a sneaker endorsement.
In real life, many losers work harder than winners, because there is much about winning or losing that is unfair. The competition that should attract more attention and respect, if we thought hard about what it meant, is not the Olympics but the Special Olympics. The person who chooses to compete, knowing their equipment is inferior and unreliable, deserves more respect than the lucky and gifted, and more medals.
If there’s one responsibility that parents take seriously, more than making their kids wear helmets just to breathe or considering a full hazmat suit to be the only suitable protection against the sun, it’s shielding their children’s self-esteem.
You may not be able to teach a child math, baseball, or music, but you haven’t really failed unless he or she comes out of childhood without good self-esteem. This overvaluation of self-esteem may be responsible for the ESE epidemic (see above), beginning with kids who actually believe they are the most perfectest special snowflakes who can be presidents of the universe and solve all the problems that exist with one smile from their precious, angel faces that were crafted by Jesus Himself in His heavenly garage/woodshop.
Unfortunately, your ability to control your child’s self-esteem is even worse than your control over your own. You can provide lots of love, good nutrition, a functional parenting partnership, and reasonable schooling and security, and still not be able to protect her from having a rough time academically or socially or from just being a very nervous, perfectionistic, self-hating little weirdo.
It’s scary to have kids, knowing how easily things can go wrong and how little your love can do to protect their self-esteem. We’d much rather watch movies about the redemptive powers of love, be they wielded by a parent or stern inner-city principal, to rescue a kid from misery and self-hate. Measuring your parenting effectiveness by your child’s lack of self-esteem can make you feel like a failure, which will probably make you an ineffective parent, even if you were pretty good to begin with. But at least now you and your kid can bond over feeling like shit.
The domino theory of good self-esteem would lead you to believe that if you can help your child become competent in math, sports, etc., self-confidence will follow, which will help social skills, which will cause success, wealth, happiness, and amazingly good luck, which will make you feel successful after all. On the other hand, if anything gets in the way of one of these dominoes that happens to lie outside of your control, the last domino will never tip into success, leaving your mission as a parent forever unfulfilled.
We know why parents impose this global responsibility on themselves; it hurts to watch your kid feel like a loser and not be able to help. Nevertheless, it’s part of the parenting job description for many unlucky parents. Sometimes, no matter how much you adore your kids, your love just doesn’t get through and they don’t like themselves. So your job, though it may sound heartless, is to do your best to build them up, remember you’ve done your best, and then go do something else. Otherwise, you’ll burn out and do your kid and yourself harm, instead of surviving to help another day.
What makes parents most awesome, however, is not the power of love, as wonderful as that is. It’s the power to love when love is doing no good, not take your kids’ suffering personally, survive, and keep on loving.
