As any parent of a child with additional needs/ disability will know, there is bound to be some amazing unbelievable achievements by our children that we get to be blown away by. We are given a possible prognosis and then everything positive we experience after that is just fricking amazing!!
Liam for example has issues with his mouth, tongue and lips, so when it comes to food, he needs it thickened up (we feel very lucky he is able to eat orally, as tasting food is one of Liam's biggest pleasures in life). A few years ago when it came to drinking Liam could only drink out of a baby's bottle and I really thought that he would be drinking out of a baby's bottle for the rest of his life. I tried and tried to get him to 'sip' from a straw (I used a poppa and would squeeze the juice up to "tempt" him), day in and day out... and nothing, he still needed the bottle. Then one day while we were watching a dvd together and I was trying to get Liam to 'sip' from the straw, I was looking at the TV but holding the straw to his lips, I felt this 'movement' in the straw and looked at Liam, he was SIPPING!!!! You have no idea how excited I was!! Ok you might. But I seriously have the moment burned brilliantly into my memory. Angels were singing I tell you!!! A major orchestra was blaring! My heart flew to the moon and back! Reality check is that everyone in the 'mainstream' can do this, but double reality check, it wasn't a given for my son. I still get pretty stoked thinking about how my big boy Liam can sip out of a straw and hasn't touched a baby bottle since!
Ok so with the way things have been going with Jack, development has been slow, but of course waaaay faster than Liam . So I have been enjoying all the awesome milestones of crawling, walking, self feeding and clapping. Even though they've been late according to the whole 'milestone' generalisation, I have enjoyed every one of them. And now we know that Jack's course of development is unknown (haha kind of an oxymoron). We have no idea how he will progress, what will be his strengths and what will be his weaknesses (and I guess this is true of all children, no matter whether they are 'mainstream' or have 'additional needs'), but in Jack's case he may be good at a very specific thing and yet be unable to do a large number of things... we just don't know. Or do we..... Well yesterday I got a glimpse into what maybe one of his strengths. I was just chatting with a good friend who was visiting (with flowers no less, yes I've claimed all the awesome people as my friends hehehe) and Jack just started counting (toddler words but it was definite that he was counting), I looked over at him and he was reading through his counting book. WTF!?!? My son reads and counts??? Since when??? Aaaaah the beauty of Autism. He can't ask for his juice or biscuit but he can fricking count!!!! Once again my heart flew to the moon and back!!! I'm still on cloud nine with it!!
Parents of children with additional needs have moments of "why? why my child? why this?" but we have long immmense awesome sessions of "hell yeah that's awesome!!! how amazing is my kid!!!!".
I am not saying 'mainstream' children aren't amazing or wonderful... otherwise Evangeline would have my guts for garters *insert sitcom audience laughter*. But ALL children are amazing, we just get to see it in a different light. And now I get to experience this on 2 different levels. I am taking this as a blessing. I do indeed live in the House of Miracles and Amazement.
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