One of the many concepts I have struggled with and contemplated over the years of parenting my autistic child has been the difference between giving up and acceptance. I have come to the conclusion that it’s simply a matter of mindset because the outcome of giving up and acceptance is the same: you recognize there is a reality you probably can’t change, so you put your energies elsewhere.

So many times I have felt like I was giving up. Or perhaps just giving up too soon. I was hard on myself, too. Remember my failure to chart? I felt so guilty when every single professional we worked with, including psychologists, psychiatrists, and occupational therapists, insisted that making reward charts was the answer. THE answer. It never was the answer for us, and I knew it. But I would often try for a week, and then just bail out. Was I giving up? I didn’t know. I just knew it wasn’t working. It seemed futile. Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough. Maybe I wasn’t organized enough or disciplined enough. Maybe it felt too difficult for me (it is true it’s not in my nature).

I realized at some point, however, that it wasn’t my failure. Charts were meaningless to Maddie. So I could release myself from guilt because really what I was doing was recognizing what was true (acceptance!) and acting accordingly. Maddie didn’t give a shit about a reward chart and she never would, so why keep trying? I could release myself. And guess what? That is not the same as giving up!

I also remember deciding there would be no more fights about homework. And in our house, that meant no homework at all. It wasn’t going to happen without a lot of pushing on my part, and often my energy was wasted. I really should have made that decision when Maddie was in first grade, when homework first came into our lives. What should have taken ten minutes (an appropriate length of time for a six-year-old, if they absolutely must have homework at all) took a full hour because of the Asperger’s (and with it, ADHD) I didn’t know she had. I don’t know why I didn’t just tell the teacher, “Look, this is killing us.” I now realize years later that she would have most likely said “No problem.” But I was fighting it, swimming upstream in a deluge, losing my mind over something that was at the time both impossible and unnecessary. If only I’d had the wisdom of acceptance back then. Or the next year, or the next year, or the year after that. And on and on.

Finally, after more than eleven years of this struggle, two weeks ago we began the new phase of Maddie’s education. She hasn’t set foot on a campus for months, and in fact she took a couple months off to do whatever the heck she wanted. Which, by the way, was awesome for me, too. I realize parenting involves occasional conflicts with your kids. You will inevitably be at odds at least once in awhile. But the daily grind of morning-long battles, fraught with anxiety on both our parts, was just too much. For both of us. I got to say at least a temporary goodbye to migraines. And, it turns out, Maddie was able to to go off the Prozac she’s been taking since she was nine.

I noticed a few days ago that her prescription bottle was still in the Ziploc bag she had taken to camp last month. She had been a bit less reliable with her nightly medication since she quit school. I was no longer managing my teenager’s bedtime, which involved watching the clock, telling her five times to brush her teeth, cleaning off her bed, filling her water bottle, reminding her to take her medication, and hanging out for a bit (I do miss our nighttime conversations) before turning off her light and saying good night. So I wasn’t aware she had simply stopped. Fortunately, unlike many similar medications, you can apparently just stop cold turkey without withdrawal symptoms.

After I spotted the neglected bottle, I casually asked Maddie if she had been taking her medication. “No,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“I thought so. Are you feeling okay?” I asked.

“Yup!” Clearly she was feeling better than OK.

“If you start feeling any anxiety or if you feel a little depressed, you need to tell me, okay?”

“Yup!” And I know she will. I’m so grateful for that.

And so here we are. Her decision to quit school relieved me of that two-month migraine and apparently freed Maddie from the anxiety, in particular, that had been plaguing her since the fourth grade. Seven years later (SEVEN YEARS!), we figured out together that “giving up” on school was really just accepting that it wasn’t working, and then making the choice to do something else, and rather magically, we are both okay. After all these years of struggle, all these years of meetings and IEPs, and then no IEPs, and then IEPs again, after traumatizing experiments with ADHD meds, after all those fights and struggles and tears and digging in on her part and frustration and yelling on my part, and frustration and even the occasional physical outburst on her part, and my trying and trying and feeling like a failure, and wondering what I should do, and then trying something and finding that doesn’t work, and trying something else and then something else, and feeling defeated and exhausted and afraid and discouraged, Maddie and I found acceptance.

And so, for now, we are free!

The difference between giving up and acceptance, it turns out, is in your feeling of power. When you give up, you are admitting defeat. The thing, whatever it is, has won. And so you shrug and say, well forget it. With acceptance, you are making a choice. You are not a victim. You are in charge. YOU say, I have decided this thing, whatever it is, is happening, and you find a way to embrace it, and hopefully, to make the best of it and find a new path to peace.