My daughters, while very intelligent, are experiencing some learning issues, especially with language. Language-based learning differences seem to be quite common among adopted children, as I noted in a previous blog.
I remember hearing parents of kids with special needs say that the disappointments and hardships seemed small compared to the joy they had in their kids, or similar sentiments.
I confess I thought these parents were not being entirely truthful. I thought, of course you love the child, but the limitations still must be disappointing.
Now I think I know what they meant.
It really surprised me when a new instructional aide learned that each of my kids had been in speech therapy for various reasons—a simple problem with “r”s for my oldest and various auditory processing, word retrieval, and syntax issues with the youngest two. She gave me such a pitying look.
Okay, maybe this past summer , as I sat for three hours while each kid had an hour with the speech therapist while I tried to entertain the other two kids in the waiting room, I could see her point. In fact, when the first couple of phone calls I made to the school district’s evaluation offices to see about speech and occupational therapy (public schools are required to provide these services to students in private or home schools as well) brought no response, I told a friend that I remembered working a volunteer information line at a family resource center. I could vividly imagine volunteers listening to a long and convoluted voice mail from a woman requesting evaluations for three kids with three different problems—and then deciding to answer other calls and wait for someone else to deal with this one.
“I probably wouldn’t have called me back either,” I told my friend laughingly. “They probably thought I was a lunatic.”
“We-ell, I’m glad you can laugh about it,” said my friend, giving me a weird look.
The thing is, it really doesn’t seem like a big deal anymore. I wanted to say, “but do you not understand that I get to live with these amazing beings?”
Even if researching special educational programs and helping the girls with therapy exercises and homework takes up a good deal of my time, it seems so insignificant compared to the joy in being with the kids.
I guess it’s like my daughter’s droopy eyelid. Regina is so vivacious in person that’s not uncommon for people to look at a photo of her and comment that they never noticed the eyelid before. It’s a decidedly noticeable droop, but who Regina is just completely overshadows the eye when you are interacting with her.
All in all, I’m having a lot of fun with these delightful kids.
Please see these related blogs:
My Thoughts on Mothering Special Kids