“That’s just normal parenting.”
The comment stayed with me long after the conversation had ended.
Not because it was unkind.
Not because it came from someone who doesn’t care.
But because of the quiet dissonance between what was said and what I was carrying when I heard it.
We had been talking about my son.
We had just come back from a holiday.
A good holiday, actually.
The first in years where I felt I had truly relaxed. The first where I wasn’t constantly waiting for something to go wrong. The first where I allowed myself, however briefly, to experience what other families might recognise as rest.
And then we came home.
Before I had even finished explaining how difficult the last few days had been for him transitioning back, the response came.
“That’s normal parenting of an eleven-year-old coming back from holidays.”
Normal.
It is such an interesting word.
Because the thing about living with something for a very long time is that people begin to adjust to it.
Perhaps they have to.
The alternative would require acknowledging a reality that feels too uncomfortable, too unfair, too relentless.
So little by little, what once seemed extraordinary starts to become ordinary.
The story becomes familiar.
The details become known.
The shock fades.
And eventually something that should never feel normal begins to be spoken about as though it is.
But my normal is not normal.
My normal is sitting in a car with a bruise so large on my thigh that moving my leg hurts.
My normal is sleeping for two hours across forty-eight because worry will not let my mind rest.
My normal is feeling sick before I walk through my own front door because I do not know what version of the evening is waiting for me.
My normal is calculating risk inside family life.
My normal is loving my child fiercely whilst simultaneously fearing what dysregulation might bring.
None of that feels normal.
And yet, perhaps that is exactly the problem.
When something happens often enough, others stop seeing its edges.
The people around us know the story.
They know there is trauma.
They know there is FASD.
They know there has been violence.
They know there is exhaustion.
But knowing is not the same as understanding.
Knowing is information.
Understanding is feeling the weight of it.
I don’t think people minimise suffering because they don’t care.
Most of the time, I think they do it because they wish it were smaller.
Perhaps they struggle to hold the reality of what someone they care about is living through.
Perhaps they are looking for reassurance.
Perhaps they are trying to offer hope.
Perhaps they simply want life to be more ordinary than it really is.
Maybe that is what happened in that conversation.
Maybe she wasn’t telling me my experience was normal.
Maybe she wanted it to be.
Because if this were ordinary parenting, then the answer would be reassuring.
Children settle.
Transitions pass.
Life returns to normal.
But part of the grief of parenting a child affected by trauma and neurodevelopmental difference is knowing that things do not always resolve in predictable ways.
The rules other families rely on do not always apply.
What unsettled me most wasn’t the comment itself.
It was the momentary feeling of being unseen.
Of standing beside an ocean and hearing someone describe it as a puddle.
Not because they were dismissive.
Because they were looking from the shore.
I understand why people do this.
In truth, I do it too.
Even I sometimes normalise things that should stop me in my tracks.
Violence has become part of conversations about family logistics.
Sleep deprivation becomes a passing remark.
Hypervigilance becomes routine.
Things that would alarm an outsider become woven into the fabric of everyday life.
Perhaps we all adapt in order to survive.
But adaptation comes with a risk.
We stop noticing what something costs.
We stop recognising the injury beneath the coping.
We stop asking whether a burden has become too heavy.
The older I get, the more I think there is a profound difference between accepting reality and calling it normal.
Acceptance says:
“This is happening.”
Normality says:
“This is what should be expected.”
Those are not the same thing.
I can accept my reality without pretending it is ordinary.
I can love my son completely without minimising the impact of what our family carries.
I can acknowledge the joy of our holiday and the pain of coming home.
Both are true.
Perhaps that is what I wished for in that moment.
Not agreement.
Not solutions.
Not even understanding.
Just recognition.
A simple acknowledgement that some lives require people to carry things that were never meant to become normal.
And that being accustomed to those things does not make them any lighter.