Due to the Stress of Raising a Child with Autism, Judy Abroates Responsibility Towards Her Son. Discuss.

Due to the stress of raising a son with autism, Judy Boone does to a certain extent abrogate certain obligations towards Christopher. However while Judy does quash immediate responsibilities towards her son, she does not detach herself from Christopher completely. The relationship between Christopher and his mother develops and changes, but is not necessarily ever cut off completely.

Despite the fact that Judy believes herself to be incompetent as a mother, there are many occasions in which she copes successfully with Christopher, even though she appears rather frustrated. When Christopher and his mother visit the beach, Christopher is frightened because he believes there are sharks in the water, and starts screaming. Judy manages to calm him down, reassuring him that “there aren’t any sharks in Cornwall”. She fans out her fingers to remind him that she loves him, and this makes Christopher feel much safer. She knows precisely how to deal with Christopher’s tantrums, and how to go about calming him down. The only difficulty she seems to have is controlling her anger and frustration, which is what prevents her from being able to go about dealing with Christopher properly, which is why she had “hit (him) sometimes... because she was a very hot-tempered person”. In spite of her tendency to be easily irritated, we see that Judy is capable of coping with Christopher, and that she is genuinely tries to be a nurturing, adoring mother to Christopher.

It is obvious that Christopher has positive and warm feeling towards Judy. He has fond memories of the times spent with his mother when he believes her to be dead, and we therefore see as readers that regardless of the fact that she considers herself “not a very good mother”, she has not had any real negative impact on her son. Christopher describes Judy as “a small person who smelt nice”, perhaps a simple description, typical for Christopher, but nonetheless one that is positive. Even when he believes that Judy is sick in hospital, he makes her a ‘Get Well’ card and tells us “I coloured all the cars in with red paint to make it a Super Super Good Day for Mother”, all in an effort to make her feel better.

While Judy does abrogate some responsibilities towards Christopher when she leaves to move in with Roger Shears, she does try to uphold some contact with her son. She continues to write letters to Christopher even when she receives no responses, and clearly cares about him enough to attempt to maintain contact. She explains that she only left in his best interests, not necessarily because it was convenient for her. Despite her description of herself as a mother being rather self-deprecating, she genuinely appears to have had Christopher’s wellbeing in the forefront of her mind when deciding to move out, seeing that her hot-temper often caused Christopher’s tantrums and deciding that if she left, Ed would “only have one person to