Special Needs

No one wants to have a child with, “special needs”.   As parents I can tell you I’d love nothing more than two children who were “average” and “normal”.    What you want isn’t always what you get though.  

My daughter’s vision impairment has functional implications due to her lack of signs.  She has related psychological issues as she copes with the change in her vision and her the medical procedures she continues to have to endure.

My son is developmentally normal, but—and this is just my opinion—our reaction as parents to my daughter’s eye situation had repercussions with our son, mostly in how we treated and reacted to him.   Regardless of the reason, we’ve been doing some, “corrective maneuvers” to get him back on track to well-adjusted and that, “normal” word again.

My son’s personality factored into what he’s been going through and how he’s reacted to everything, but as parents, it’s hard to have the excuse, “I just didn’t know…”   Not that that’s not a great excuse, because it is, except as parents we kick ourselves for not knowing everything if it turns out something we didn’t know meant our children suffered.  

So we’re kicking ourselves in part for how we’ve handled things and we’re sad for the other parts we’ve not been able to control.   Regardless though, we’re dealing with what we have and we’re fortunate to have some wonderful people to help us.   Our children’s school has been tremendous.   They are continually willing to rise to the challenge of helping both educate us as well as provide the best possible learning environment for out children.

Our play therapist has been there to both help our children through things from their perspective and she’s been there for us so we can understand how to understand our children and what to do to help them.    Our therapist, teachers and curriculum coordinator are working together to provide the best environment and setting for our children to succeed.

We are grateful, very much so, for our friends, family and teacher who pointed out a need our children had so that we could help address it.   These same people who helped us see that need are also the ones helping us work towards solutions.    

And solutions we will have—and by solutions, I mean happy, well-adjusted children who enjoy being themselves.

The Big Boy Update:  Pokemon cards.  My son has some Pokemon cards.   He can’t read them yet, but he can remember them.   We got him another pack today, which you’d think he’d be happy about, but he wasn’t.   He was upset because the additional cards would be too much and he wouldn’t be able to fit them all into the old, leather wallet dad gave him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Our play therapist said today, “I was wrong” when we were talking about my daughter.   She is over-reacting to lots of things and we don’t understand why.   Dhruti agrees something is weighing down on her mind, she said it’s like worrying there’s a sword over your head and you’re not sure if it’s going to drop on you.   Dhruti is going to help us figure it out so we can help my daughter work through it.