"Man, I am glad I have a child with special needs"

I am officially failing at this blogging challenge. My cousin and other half, Lexi came in town last week from Ohio and we had way too much fun together (more on our fun to come later) so I had a good excuse...so I am going to try and be good the rest of the month....we will see.

So I have had the opportunity to interview for this piece with All You magazine about how having a child with special needs has made me a better person and it has really made me think and recognize all the ways that Bree is helping me become a better person. She is teaching me more patience, more about unconditional love, more about acceptance, more about what "perfect" and "normal" really mean. She is teaching me not to judge other people and how to love people, in spite of their differences.

One of the questions I was asked was to think about a time when I thought to myself,

“Man I am glad I have this child with special needs!” As I thought of some specific examples for the interview, I realized that this happens daily! I am grateful each day that I have this child with special needs! It is often not in a big defining moment, but in lots of little moments. It is hard to express in words, but there are countless times a day when my heart is overflowing and I think "man I am glad I have this child with special needs!" Yes many days are frustrating, but I am always reminded of the joy and love that she brings me and I am so grateful for the richness she has brought to my life.

Lately I feel like I have been having more of these days where I am frustrated or sad or depressed about things with her and comparing her to others her age and what she isn't doing or how she is struggling so much lately to appropriately get peoples attention. She is in this hitting phase, and most of the time she is hitting people to get their attention, because she wants to tell them something or show them something and she doesn't know how to verbalize that desire. So it has been frustrating, and sad to watch because I watch her do this to her little friends and they don't understand what she needs or that she is not trying to be mean, and so they run away and don't want to be around her. And I feel sad that Bree can't say to them "I am not trying to be mean, I just want to show you something"

When I start to get caught up in these frustrations and in the things she still isn't doing, or I start to feel sad that younger kids around her are doing more than her, like when I got sad the other day as I heard of how her little friends in her dance class were telling their moms all about what they had done in class and I realized Bree can’t do that right now, yes she can say words and express herself but she can’t relay the accounts of what goes on in dance class or preschool to me like I would like or like she would like. If I say “what did you do in dance class or at school today?” she can’t tell me. As I drove home from dance class with her I listened as she intently rattled off a whole conversation of “jibberish”, and although I couldn’t understand the words, I knew she was trying so hard to express her thoughts to me and she wanted so badly to do it, just like her friends could. As I started to feel sad about this I only have to stop for a moment and look at the little achievements she is making each day and it all changes. I stopped and realized she was telling me something, even if I couldn’t make out the exact words, and I realized she was going to class on her own and she was participating in a “typical” class and she was enjoying herself and that is what matters, so why should I compare her to the other girls? She was doing big things and she was doing them well!

In her world little achievements are BIG achievements! In her world, putting a cheerio in a small hole is a BIG achievement, or drawing a line on a paper, or taking a drink from a regular glass withough dumping it down her chest, or recognizing which name tag is hers at school and because of her, these rather small achievements have taught me that no achievement is small and I am grateful for each little daily miracle!