When Shaul was a young boy, his prescribing psychiatrist asked us when we were planning on placing him in a residence.
We were horrified. This is our child. We love him so much. “How can you even suggest such a thing?” we asked him.
He responded, “I am just letting you know exactly how things are. As the months and years go by, Shaul is going to require more and more attention which you will not be able to give him. No matter how well meaning you will be, it will not be possible to give him all that he will need. Conversely, your other children will not receive even close to the attention that they deserve as you will be busy trying to attend to Shaul. In other words, if you love each one of your children, you will inevitably need to have Shaul live in a residence — it’s just a matter of sooner or later.”
This conversation hurt us to the core: We were basically being told that by keeping our son at home, we were demonstrating our lack of love for both him and our other children. This was devastating to hear. Although the doctor was an expert in his field, we did not want to accept what he was saying. As a result, until Shaul was in his early 20s, we attempted to do the impossible: do right by him and right by the others.
Were we successful? It is hard to say. You would have to ask our other children. We have a feeling that if you asked some of them, they would say straight out “no.” Taking care of Shaul came at the expense of all else. Everything was impacted — having a meal at the Yom Tov table was affected, going out to eat in a restaurant was affected, taking a family picture was affected, having free access to the refrigerator and pantry was affected.
In our defense, we did our best. We tried to show our love for both him and the others in every decision we made for our family. So when finally we had the opportunity to have Shaul move into a residence, it was simultaneously one of the easiest and hardest decisions we had to make as parents.
It was easy because this is what we had been davening to happen for so long — for Shaul to have a place to live where he would be well taken care of while we could be present and available for the rest of our family. At the same time, it felt “icky” as we were willingly and knowingly sending away a child who didn’t want to go. When we got in the car with his luggage he began saying “go home, go home.” It was hard to keep the tears in but it was important to not show sadness in front of Shaul as we wanted him to be happy about his new residence.
The next challenge was to help Shaul transition well to his new home. We wanted to visit enough to demonstrate to Shaul that we didn’t forget about him but not so much that we would compromise his adjustment. We found that once a week was a good balance and it appeared that Shaul was doing nicely in his “Teaneck house” (as he was fond of saying).
He had been there about a month when Pesach came. We decided that it would be a good balance for Shaul to be at his Teaneck home for the first days of Yom Tov and be in his “Passaic home” for the last days. We truly didn’t know what to expect: would Shaul’s behavior be any different now that he was not living with us on a consistent basis? Would it be better? Would it be worse? We took a wait and see attitude and hoped for the best.
His stay came and went. Upon reflection, it was difficult to tell whether Shaul had behaved any differently than usual. However, one thing was clear: We were much more tolerant of his “autistic” behaviors. We even caught ourselves smiling at antics which would have gotten a very different reaction a few months ago. The old saying, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” could not have been more true in this case.
We can only hope that as time goes on, we only become fonder and fonder of this child. It will be difficult; after all, we love him so much that we sent him to live elsewhere because that would be best for him. True, it hurts now — for him and for us. Nevertheless, it would be a tough argument to make that this is not objectively the best decision for all concerned.
We certainly hope so.
