A little bit lonely...

It's a little bit of a lonely road you walk down when you have children with special needs (especially those that manifest behaviorally). There is the judgement, those who don't understand, the stares, the assumptions about bad parenting...Tonight Wendel was talking about a co-worker of his who lives in Maricopa with his family. They invited us to dinner a couple of years ago. Although I was looking forward to it, I completely spaced it when the day came and missed the dinner entirely. I didn't realize it until over and hour after we were supposed to be there. Becky had messaged me through Facebook but I didn't receive FB notifications on my phone at that time. I didn't have her phone number so I had Wendel call Ross (her husband) once I realized our oversight. She was not happy. I sent her several messages and she didn't reply for a couple of days. After profusely apologizing, she finally responded and basically said she went through a lot of effort and it was frustrating that we didn't show up. I get that. I would be a little frustrated too. We invited them over a couple of weeks later. And after that, nothing. I mentioned to Wendel tonight (at his mention of Ross) how badly I feel about that dinner and how Becky and I never clicked after that but that it could've been different. He said, "Let's face it, we have challenging kids. We're not going to have many friends. They don't get it." And aside from our oversight with dinner that night, I could feel the difference between our kids and theirs. I think maybe it was more of us offending them than the differences in our kids that drove a wedge between us but it is still an issue to consider and one that definitely weighs heavily on my heart. I can think of friendships that have been strained and even severed due to "differences in parenting styles" or how challenging our children can be. I could include example after example of one friend, in particular, whom I was close to when Oliver was young. (We aren't really friends anymore. Barely acquaintances.) But I won't go down that road. Not tonight anyway.