Coming to Terms With a Special Needs Kid

Last year, I took my daughter Anna on her turn to help me at the Sheep and Wool Festival.  Within two days, three people asked me if she had problems.  Fortunately, a friend who also homeschools and has a business at Sheep and Wool is also a child occupational therapist and recommended we go to our doctor and get a prescription for occupational therapy.  I was starting to get anxious.

I took her advice, and we got an appointment with the doctor.  We also had a blood test done, because she was 11, 5 feet tall and weighed 190 pounds.  The doctor asked her if she felt self-conscious about her speech, and, to my joy, she didn't.  While she had difficulty with her "r's" and sibiliants, the atmosphere that she had experienced was encouraging enough that her family and friends had never made fun of her speech patterns. That was my happy.  After that, things were not so happy.

The first thing we found was, she was an 11 year old Type II diabetic.  We have tried so many things, but she has only gone up and is now 12 years old, 5 foot 2 inches and 125 pounds.

The next thing we found out, at the occupational therapist, was that mostly, her brain is fine, and the fact that she reads like a fiend is beneficial to her.  Beyond that, she is delayed almost, but not quite, to the level where she would get therapy at school in two areas: fine motor coordination and visual perception.

Next, the speech therapist discovered that her tongue is actually too large for her mouth, which explains the speech difficulties.  She also had difficulties finishing sentences that begin with prepositional phrases.

So, I lay in bed one Saturday morning praying about Anna.
"God, does Anna have learning problems?" "Yes."
So, I cried.  I could not be happy to have an over-sized daughter with speech impediments, chronic illness and learning problems.  I want her to be loved and admired and for life to be easy and happy for her.

But then, God made me be honest with myself.  I know other kids who have learning problems and physical problems and, really, she was so much better off!  She has people around who love her, she is a fantastic reader and storyteller, has compassion for cats and is one of the favorite playmates of her 6 year old brother.  At homeschool camp later that summer, I talked with a friend of mine whose 6 foot 7 inch son has severe Aspberger's Syndrome.  She was so encouraging to me of different things to do and gave me beautiful perspective on Anna.

She is smart.  Advanced Math is not important for life, but arithmetic is.  Playing games and doing chores is vitally important to her education, perhaps even more than academic work.  And, on top of that, I have had my pride well and truly squashed, which is always a good thing.  I had to grieve for what I had hoped she would be, but now I see all the things she can be.

She took the Iowa tests at the beginning of the school year.  I realized that, with her birthday at the end of September, I can actually call her a 6th grader, rather than 7th grader.  While that does lower the standard, I want her to be successful for her heart's sake.  Interestingly, that didn't affect her testing at all!  Yes, her math concepts were about 3rd grade.  So were her understanding of the use of reference materials.  Guess what: I never taught her how to use them, so how could she know them?  The same went with the prepositional phrase starts to sentences that the speech therapist gave her: I never worked on grammar or sentence construction with her -- how could she know them?  On the other hand, her reading comprehension and vocabulary were at 8th and 9th grade -- above average by any standard -- and her spelling was in the whopping 13th grade!  A college freshman!

Does she have challenges?  Yes.   Her math stinks and she has a hard time manipulating a pencil.  Is she going to be awkward socially?  For a while, definitely, until we give her the tools to understand other people's needs.  Does she need to lose weight?  It is life and death that she does.  Do we need to expect more from her?  Yes.  She is not a baby and if we treat her as one, she will behave as one.  But, is she capable of contributing to society?  Yes.  She is either going to be a crazy cat lady or a vet, but both of those contribute to society.  And right now, she is skating with another awkward, overgrown little girl who desperately wants a friend.  And she is being a friend.