Your mother says it kindly. That is what makes it worse.
“I just think if you were more consistent with him, you’d see a difference.”
Or the Sunday school teacher pulls you aside after service and says they aren’t sure they can have him in the class anymore. Or a friend sends you an article about a diet, with three exclamation points, because she saw it and thought of you.
We spend so much energy getting ready for the conversations with our children. And then we get blindsided by the adults.
Here is what makes these so much harder than the ones we’ve been talking about all month. With your child, you have authority and you have time. You can say it badly on Tuesday and better on Thursday. With your mother-in-law you have neither. There is history in the room. There is a relationship you need to keep. And there is a very real chance that saying the truth out loud is going to cost you something at Thanksgiving.
So we don’t say it. We go around instead.
We stop bringing him. We find a different church. We answer the article with a thumbs-up and a lie. We manage the situation for another year, and then another one, and we tell ourselves we are keeping the peace.
Be honest with me for a second. Is there a conversation you have been having with your husband, in the car, on the way home, for three years — that you have never once had with the person it’s actually about?
Most of us have at least one.
“Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” (Colossians 4:6)
I love that last part, and I think we read right past it. Not how you ought to answer. How you ought to answer each person. Paul assumes the conversations will be different depending on who is standing in front of you, and he is right. There is not one script for this. There are about three.
The ones who love your child and are frightened.
This is usually the grandparents, and it is usually not stubbornness. It is grief hiding behind denial. A diagnosis takes something from them too — a future they had already pictured — and doubting it is easier than grieving it. “He’ll grow out of it” and “he’d be fine with more discipline” are both ways of saying please let this not be true.
So lead with the thing you actually share. “I know how much you love him. I need you to hear something difficult, and I need you to stay in it with me.” Then say the specific thing you need — not the whole education, just the one behavior. “When you tell him to look you in the eye, it costs him more than you know. Please don’t ask him to.” One request can bring some resolution and victory. Twelve requests make a person defensive.
In our case, it was making sure they asked our kids to look them in the eye, or they might not even know you are talking to them, but that one little change made everything better in so many ways.
And then there is the sentence. If you have been at this any length of time you already know the one I mean. There’s nothing wrong with them. You just need to discipline them better. (Can I add an "ugh" and eye roll here, please?)
I want to tell you why that one hits the way it does because it took me years to understand it myself.
I disciplined my children privately. Away from other people’s ears and eyes, out of respect for my child’s dignity, because I did not think an audience was owed a seat at the worst moment of my child’s day. And I disciplined them differently from one another, because they were different from one another.
A swat or a corner meant nothing to my autistic children. There was no line in their minds between the thing they had done and the thing now happening to them. But losing computer time connected. Losing the thing they had been looking forward to connected — especially when I sat down and explained what the choice had been and why it was the wrong one. With my younger daughter, it took almost nothing at all. Tell her the expectation, tell her the consequence, and she generally chose well.
So the person telling me to discipline my children had never once seen me discipline my children. The very thing that made me careful is the thing that made me look careless.
You will not win that one by arguing. What you can say, without heat, is the truth: “You’ve never seen me discipline them. I do it privately and I do it differently for each of them, because they need different things. I’d be glad to tell you what works, if you want to know.” And then let the offer sit there.
The ones who have power over your child.
Teachers, principals, therapists, children’s ministry leaders, coaches. Different rules entirely, and this is where I see mixed-needs mamas make the biggest mistake: we treat it like a relationship conversation when it is an access conversation.
You are not there to be liked, and you are not there to win. You are there so your child can be in the room. Be pleasant. Be specific. Bring one page, not a binder. Ask for one accommodation at a time and ask for it in writing. And follow up the meeting with a short, friendly email that repeats what was agreed to — not because you are building a case, but because memories fade and paper doesn’t.
As advocates for our children we must be warm and immovable at the same time. That combination is unusual, but it is much more biblical than what our culture usually teaches people to do. We can work together in cooperation much more readily when we respond with respect but resolve.
And sometimes the person with power over your child is simply, confidently wrong.
I once had a clinician tell me that autism is a psychosis — and that because my children were obviously not psychotic, they could not be autistic. She was not unkind about it. She was just convinced of what she had been taught.
Credentials are not the same as being right. You will not always be able to win that argument, and you do not have to. What you have to do is decline to hand your child over to a conclusion you know is false. Keep whatever paperwork you have, and go find someone else.
The ones who are simply careless.
The woman at the park. The cousin who has opinions. The stranger in the checkout line who has decided that what your family needs is her input.
Here is my permission slip to you: most of these do not require a conversation at all.
Courage is not the same thing as answering everyone. You have a limited amount of this in a day, and spending it on a stranger in aisle seven means you don’t have it for the meeting on Thursday that actually determines something. “Thanks, we’ve got a good team” and a warm smile is a complete response. Walk on. You owe her nothing.
The part I wish I could skip but that we need to acknowledge is this: Sometimes you will do all of this well and it will not work. Your mother will not come around. The church will not make room. You will say the truth, graciously, seasoned with salt, and the person will simply not receive it.
Have the conversation anyway. Not because it always changes them — it doesn’t — but because of who else is in the room.
And I want to tell you something I wish someone had told me twenty years ago: this does not entirely go away. My children are adults now. I still have these conversations. There is not a season coming when everyone finally understands and you get to stop.
I don’t say that to discourage you. I want to share the truth and prepare you so maybe you won't be blindsided quite as often. We need to develop a bit of a thick skin. We need to understand that many people simply don't understand and really don't want to. We need to find a way to let go and move on. I don't know about you, but that's hard for me. I keep replaying the conversation, my reaction, what I should of or could have said, how I felt, how my child felt - over and over. I have to hand it to God, sometimes many times. So, that's my encouragement to you - give it to God, have the conversation you need to, and do it well. Then, go live your life instead of waiting for the day the world catches up.
Your child is watching. They are learning what it sounds like when someone speaks up for them, kindly and without apology. They are learning that what happens to them is worth a hard conversation. And in about ten years, when someone says something careless and you are not standing there, they are going to reach for the words they heard you use.
That is the whole point of a month like this one. Not that we win every conversation. But that our children never once have to wonder whether we would have one for them.