“Mawwage. Mawwage is what bwings us together today.” Okay guys, what movie is that line from? Who guessed The Princess Bride? Dads, if you haven’t seen The Princess Bride, stop reading and go watch the movie right now! Get over the title; it’s not a chick-flick. There are swords, pirates, women and fights to the death, revenge, and true love!  Yes, true love and marriage. Real men need to remember how to fight for true love and marriage, no matter how tough things get.

Remember how we pursued our wives before we got married? You could talk for hours. Is that normal? You told her stuff about you that even your best buddies didn’t know. Remember when you proposed, and that tiny flicker of fear that she might say no, that’s normal. Let’s not forget the normal vows, " For better, for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, till death do us part."  Actually, I don’t remember repeating that part. I was so lost in how beautiful my bride was, that I would have repeated anything. You coulda sold me a time-share in Iowa, a George Foreman Grill and tickets to the ballet; all I heard was the kiss the bride part.

Ahhhh, twue wuv!??

Like a movie, we expect that we will live normal, happily ever after, lives and raise a couple perfectly normal kids in the suburbs. The kids would even walk without fear to their normal neighborhood school. ??

Then two kids became three and one of them has special needs so she can’t walk to the local school; even if she could, they say they don’t have the resources to modify the normal curriculum for your child. Now you have to make modifications for a wheel chair to your suburban home. Your child with special needs must have full access, and a normal room isn’t large enough for her therapy. It’s going to take a lot of time and effort to deal with the house, the school, the doctors and the therapists, but you both work normal fulltime jobs. Financially it stops making sense that you are both working fulltime to pay for someone else to care for your kids, so one of you quits and stays home like a normal parent. Normally it’s the wife who stays home, but in this scenario it makes more sense for you to be the one to switch careers and stay home. IEP, SSI, PEP, SLS; for you speaking in acronyms becomes normal; she has no idea what IDEA means. More money than normal is going out than is coming in, so you get a second mortgage, but you don’t get the normal rate because you only have half the income you normally had. Everything is so expensive and the norm is for the insurance company to deny most of your claims.  How many hours have you spent on the phone telling and re-telling the insurance company that your child needs more therapy than normal and why are you making this so hard? You need a break - now! So when your wife gets home from work you normally shut down and make her take over, because getting to go to work with adults, away from the house, is like a vacation compared to what your normal day has become.  Then your wife starts working longer hours than normal, she doesn’t want to come home and start her second job. The resentment builds; layer upon layer. This is where too many people normally start talking divorce.??

Bye-bye normal marriage. So long true love.

I read and hear all the time that the divorce rate of parents of a child with special needs is higher than “normal.”  What’s normal about divorce?!  I can’t find any real numbers to prove that the divorce rate is higher, but www.divorcerate.org says that for a “normal couple,” 50 percent of first marriages, 67 percent of second and 74 percent of third marriages end in divorce.

Dads, don’t let divorce be normal.  There’s a "new normal" that can save your marriage - if you look for it.

Your "new normal" includes all of the changes you’ve made and will continue to make to improve the quality of life for your child with special needs, your family, your marriage and yourself too.  Your "new normal" is how you choose to see your life, your child and your marriage.  All are gifts that cannot be returned; they should not be judged by what the world deems normal. Realizing and accepting that things will be never be “normal” for your child is a huge step in understanding, accepting and to use one of my wife’s psycho-babble words, embracing your new normal.  What’s not normal is staying at work to avoid being at home.  What’s not normal is denying your child, your family, your spouse and yourself the opportunities to explore the wonders and possibilities of being the Dad of a child with special needs. Because they’re really not special needs – They’re just the "new normal."

One final thought from the SN Dadvocate - True love, the love you and your wife once knew in its purest form, is more powerful than anything life can throw at you. True love is looking at your child with special needs, then thanking your wife for bringing such a perfect child into your "new normal" life.  True love is priceless, and yet for you, it is free.

Scott Forlenza
The Special Needs Dadvocate