"All Kids Do That" Part 11: Driving

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Oh, god.... driving. *GASP*

Today I am happy to welcome my awesome friend Jessica, who blogs at Four Plus An Angel, and is also co-owner of Pin Savvy Social (Oh, yeah. Shameless plus. That totally just happened)

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When my daughter was well beyond the age most kids learned, I decided it was time for her to ride a bike. A single mom in those days, I enlisted the help of my brother and dad. They removed the training wheels from the bike she had barely ever used and got on either side. As they pushed her down the street she turned her head and talked, about dinner and lunch and breakfast the next day and what time we would be finished because Rachael Ray was on at 1pm on weekdays. If they had let go of her she would have fallen over faster than you can say Food Network.

And it was then that I declared us done. We were finished trying to do "normal".

The only ones who wanted her to learn to ride a bike were myself and those people who write the books on child development that I may have burned with the candles on her second birthday cake.

My daughter is 16 now, 16 and six months. Six months past the age when she "should" have received her driver's license. Six months into questions about when we are starting driver's training and stories from well-meaning parents about their child who didn't feel like driving until he was 18 or their daughter who they thought would never get her license until one day (thank goodness!) she finally parallel parked.

It is a good thing I perfected the closed mouth, plastered on smile response years ago.

My daughter will not drive, not because she doesn't feel like it or because the only thing holding her back is fitting our mini van between a truck and a sedan, but because she is wired differently. She could direct you to any location in our city with her eyes closed and regularly comes to the rescue of a lost substitue bus driver, but if you put her behind the wheel you better be prepared to hit the brake while she is steering or steer while she pushes her foot all the way down on the gas. Don't worry, none of this would be dangerous because that important first step of taking the car out of park was forgotten long ago.

Not being able to drive has many implications on her future and I am okay with that, I made peace with it long ago. What I have not made peace with is others trying to wrap our autism up with a pretty bow. My normal is not their normal.

Lacking the desire to drive or putting it off for a few years is not the same as not having the developmental skills to brake and steer while looking straight ahead. I'm sure there is some special education/occupational therapist/miracle worker who could spend the next five years helping my daughter learn to drive but frankly, we are therapy-ed out and so is she. There will be no more attempts at trying to fit her into someone else's "normal". Accepting her as she is is a much greater gift than a set of car keys.

She is perfectly happy with her life, just don't tell her she missed a Food Network marathon eight years ago when her mom thought she should learn to ride a bike.

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