My daughter as been in her general education second grade class for almost three months. She is very lucky in many ways and unlucky in others. I say that now, after meeting the teacher for a conference a few weeks ago. We decided to schedule the 15-minute session as in-person. Based on the texts and the behavior reports she was getting, we felt a phone call would not suffice to talk through it. Plus, I wanted to expose my facial expressions and see the teacher's. Sometimes for me it is easier to read cues like that. Maybe because of the era I grew up in? There was no Internet until I was 19 for me. But I digress. The meeting was wonderful. It extended from 15 minutes to 1 hour and 15 minutes and they praised her, told us the accommodations she is getting to help her. Accommodations that they did for her, not because it was in the IEP. Her classmates hold her hand when in line. Every employee in school calls her by name and greet her each time they see her.
Her rough days come in waves, and we've had a bad one this week. The sad thing is that she cannot or will not be honest about her school experience. Which is why I also know she was unlucky. I worry a lot that I am allowing unecessary damage to her. Is it fair to let her be reported for her overwhelm? Or is it more pragmatic to let the school push her boundaries gradually to make her better equipped for life? At home I try to be supportive on days I get reports she was having a bad time or lashed out. Questions are never framed as something being wrong with her. I ask her about specific things in yes or no to see if we can start seeing the patterns of her waves. Is she sick? Tired? Was it noisy? Were the lessons new and confusing? But so far she's masking and claiming her days are going well. And that is the part that makes me worried. That I cannot defend her or help because all I get are reports of the behavior, but no extra information to understand what to do.
Like I mentioned, this has been a bad week, with texts every day about issues. Yesterday we got a text from the principal, to show us that she had to be written up and sent to another class to finish her day. I responded with an apology. That I was sorry and will talk to her to see if I can learn more. The principal said to not be sorry, that they will continue to work to help her. People often say “don't be sorry" and seldom mean it. But this felt authentic. I'm so used to being sorry for who I am, and for who she is. It's this seesaw of being sorry/wishing I were normal (I am harder on myself than my daughter) and feeling an anger that (I can only speak for myself about this) I was born into this world, not by my choice even, yet I was trained to think that everything about me is either quirky, funny, weird, unacceptable. I get exhausted of people telling em I am fine, that I am accepted when it's not true. When you mask for decades, only to be rejected when the mask slips, then how can one be blamed for knowing that acceptance is a lie? I worry that my daughter will be rejected, or worse... that she will be like me. Like Pavlov's experiment, I have learned responses for all the triggers. Will she learn that her authentic self is something to hide? I wish I had the answers. I can only treat her the opposite as I was treated in my early childhood. I don't know if it is enough to stop her from saying “I'm Sorry". To stop saying it so much that it becomes a security blanket, as words to beg for the overwhelm and anxiety to stop. That it becomes a hateful mantra that makes her feel less than human.
Masked Autistics are also particularly likely to engage in the trauma response that therapist Pete Walker describes as “fawning.” Coping with stress doesn’t always come down to fight versus flight; fawning is a response designed to pacify anyone who poses a threat. And to masked Autistics, social threat is just about everywhere. “Fawn types avoid emotional investment and potential disappointment by barely showing themselves,” Walker writes, “by hiding behind their helpful personas, over-listening, over-eliciting or overdoing for the other.” Walker notes that by never revealing their own needs or discomfort with other people, fawners spare themselves the risk of rejection. But they also fail to connect with people in any meaningful way. It’s a lonesome state to live.
– Devon Price (Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity)