guilt

It's mother's day and guilt nags me.

Am I a good mom? I am not trying for any mom of the year but I do hope I doing right by these boys. I hope they will have more good memories than bad.

Did I do enough to help the boys with their autism? Should I have done more?

I started thinking about my friend, J. She has 3 kids. Her middle son, A, has autism. His was of the regressive kind. He seemed to be developing normally then stopped talking and walked funny sometimes. They thought he might have had a stroke and did a ton of tests on him. They did not label him with autism because their insurance wouldn't pay for treatments with that diagnosis. J did a lot with A. She took him to a DAN doctor and tried all kind of things with his diet. The whole family changed their dynamic in order to help A get through this. J seemed to have endless energy devoted to A and his therapies. I haven't seen A in years since they moved but it sounds like he is doing really well. He is doing a lot more than my boys combined including sports and cub scouts.

Should I have done more? Should I have tried the gluten free/casein free diet? I don't know. I don't think I could have done much more than I did. We stopped doing outside speech therapy when the boys fussed about going and added so much stress to the day. I certainly don't have the support system J has. Nor am I as organized and she is. I applaud her efforts but still feel bad about my own.

Guilt sucks.