Raising Square Pegs in a Round Hole World

I GAVE BIRTH TO SQUARE PEGS.

I gave birth to square pegs. They never fit the milestones in the baby books, or matched the infants and toddlers I saw in my friends’ growing families. I had square pegs in a round hole world. What could I do?

I was very prepared for round pegs. I had done everything just right, exactly right. I read the baby books and took the birthing classes. I hired a Doula and made a birth plan. I was certain that I would be smooth and round, a perfect Mother. A round hole, ready to receive my round pegs.

WHITTLING AWAY THE DIFFERENT

Square pegs can only fit into round holes if they shave off most of who they are. Unfortunately I knew just how to do this. This was my unique area of expertise. I had been shaving off parts of myself all the years of my life. When my babies were young, I didn’t know yet that I was an undiagnosed autistic mother raising autistic children. All I knew was how to hustle, how to work harder than everyone else in order to be like everyone else, how to ignore the knowledge that I was different and instead plaster on a big smile and a Band-Aid, whittling whittling whittling away the Different until i was just the same.

I was a square peg who believed she was round. But into the world my children arrived, perfectly shaped, perfectly square. Three square pegs in four short years.

I loved them so fiercely. 

I never wanted them to change who they were, and yet we teach our children most by our example, by the way we choose to live, and I couldn’t help it — I was teaching them to shave off their pointy corners and to change their distinctive shape. I was showing them all I knew to do – the way to become round. 

TRYING TO FIT THE ROUND MOLD

With my oldest son, he dutifully followed my example. Like me, he became obsessed with the rules. If we always follow the rules, we will be safe. And he didn’t just follow the rules, he took everything over the top. When he decided to be on time to elementary school, we ended up sitting in the parking lot for 20 minutes before the doors opened, so that he could be the very first person inside. He screamed and stomped his feet and shook with anxiety desperate to get into the car so that he could be right on time for being early for being early.

That’s the problem with square pegs who shave off parts of themselves to become round. It’s impossible to get the shape exactly right. And it is also impossible to hide the scars.

A WARRIOR OF INDEPENDENCE

My second square peg took the opposite path. If there was a rule he broke it. If there was a boundary he crossed it. He was fierce and full and self determined and strong and square. And no amount of whittling would change his shape. When I brought out my tools to carve him into a circle he brought out his tools and battled me. A warrior of independence. 

Battling my son destroyed me. Or I should say it destroyed the old me. After denying myself for so long I busted out of my round hole mold in order to be reborn in my proper shape and to take up my mantle as a square mother in a round hole world. Busting out of my round mold and growing corners again was intensely painful. Much like childbirth, creating new life also leaves scars. It changes you. I would be scarred either way.

Three months after getting an autism diagnosis for my second child, I got one for myself. At six years old, my second son broke down and went into an extended period of autistic burn out. At 38 years old, I also broke down and went into an extended period of artistic burn out. We burned out on this round world and these whittling tools and the pain of squeezing into a shape that never ever had us in mind. At first I could only see failure, a failure of a mom, but that too broke down.

It all had to break.

To all the world it looked like a failure. My son was watching YouTube 12 hours a day without speaking to me, without eating anything healthy. All the markers of what good moms do were completely gone, and I believed that I had failed. Believing that I failed brought me to my break down because there’s nothing I wanted more than to be a good mom.

NOT BREAKING DOWN. BREAKING FREE.

But one day a friend suggested an alternative narrative, what if I wasn’t breaking down? What if I was breaking free? What if letting everything fall away was a kind of freedom, a release of long-held dreams that were never the right shape for me or my family? In order to accept my children, I needed to accept myself. Radical self-acceptance is necessary to accept my children and create a world where they can flourish.

The more I accept myself—autistic, a square peg, different and just right—the better I can form a brave new life for my family. 

I am a square peg. My old shape broke apart and my new square self was reborn. I am a square peg mom, wildly accepting, free to make up my own rules, to shape my own world.

A world where my little square pegs will not shave off their corners or pretend to be what they are not for anyone.