We bring our children home.
Jul 22, 2021We bring our children home
From failed systems
That have been enabled not to care
Not to care for our children
For us; when we were the children
We educate our children
And while trying to create a safe space
For their trauma to unravel
Our trauma too, unravels
Our children are recovering
From the names
Naughty, disrespectful, inattentive,
Selfish, lazy, stubborn
Their disability dismissed
A passive unwillingness to suspend disbelief
Translation of disability to wilful insubordination
A child who pretends at 4,5,6 to be a broken version of neuronormative
We bring our children home
The support on offer dismisses our struggle
The nightmares, the grief and the tears
The exclusion, the feelings of failure
At 4,5,6
The support calls for us to change them
Our children
To make them pretend
But even in their best pretending, disguising, masking
They were rejected, abandoned, disapproved of
We bring our children home
We are not believed, understood, supported
We are blamed for our children's inability to pretend
To be neuronormative
If only we’d set boundaries, take away their comforts, do a parenting course
Our children are traumatised and nobody cares
Put them into therapy to overcome themselves
Take a break, have a cup of tea and grow a spine
How will they survive the real world?
Stop making it so bloody hard for them in the first place
THIS is the real world
These are children
4,5,6
We bring our children home
Have we filled in those forms yet? Taken those tests?
Engaged in that therapy? Spoken to that person?
We are processing the trauma we underestimated because our children were pretending
They need to be in school
They should be learning
There’s a small window of opportunity
Our children, refused entry to the classroom because they didn’t get to the door fast enough
Got to school late
Cried all morning
We are processing intergenerational trauma
We bring our children home
We pick up the tab
We do the work
We make the sacrifices
We bring our children home
- KF
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