An Ordinary Mom's Musings

Did you watch the new episode of This is Us last week?

This is Us is a great show, but what excites me is how they nail portraying the emotional responses to experiences in life as I have written about before.

Kate exudes love towards their son Jack. While she would like her child to be able to see, it isn’t a factor in her relationship with her son. Kate is a model of acceptance.

Whereas Toby’s reaction is different. He’s sad. His son will never see the world around him. Never see a blue sky, the colors of a bird, the sparkle in his mother’s eyes. Toby has a hard time getting past the sadness that this brings. He’s trying to find a way past it, but he’s struggling.

Then there is Rebecca who is having memory issues.

Miguel, her husband doesn’t want to believe that anything is wrong. He wants to believe they’re just getting old. Older people have trouble remembering things, right? There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing to see here. He’s in denial.

Randall, Rebecca’s son is sure that there is something wrong, and he is going to do something about it. He accepts the clues he has seen and immediately moves into problem-solving mode. How can he fix it? How can he get the answers he needs?

None of these responses are wrong.

Often when we are going through difficult situations, the people around us have different responses and deal with the news differently than we do. Sometimes when it is different from our own response, we get angry or impatient. Why can’t they see that something is wrong? Why won’t they be more accepting? In return, they are wondering how you can just accept this change. Why are you giving up hope? This is where the trouble enters.

Toby and Kate model this well in the episode. Their marriage starts to suffer because they each don’t understand the why behind how the other person is reacting. While these characters are fiction, the issues they are facing are real, and I’ve seen many people trying to find their way through these situations.

As a parent of a child with special needs, when we learned of our son’s autism diagnosis, my reaction was more of a Randall and Kate response. What do I need to do? A diagnosis wasn’t going to change how I felt about my child. Let’s get on with the business of trying to figure out how to help him.

My husband’s response to the diagnosis was more of a Miguel and Toby response. It took a lot for him to accept that this was our child’s reality. It took time for him to mourn the dreams he had made for our child that weren’t going to happen before he could consider new dreams.

I may have come to terms with our new reality faster, but it doesn’t mean that my way was better.

But now that I am further down this road, I have seen this scenario play out time after time with other families.

The best things you can do in times like this?

Keep the lines of communication open. Listen. Give each other space to be able to deal with the news in their own way. And most of all, don’t give up.