You are such an amazing young boy who has grown before my eyes. You have a passion for music, reading, army men, spiderman, and electronics. You would go to the end of the earth to be with your friends and around peers. You bring a smile to my face every morning that I find new items hidden in your bed as you greet me with a "hi!" and huge grin. Your eyes sparkle with a light that they did not have three years ago and for that reason we will continue to thrive.
Trust and anxiety are still difficult for you and rightfully so. A dear friend has been trying to tell me, and I finally understand, that "I am all you need," that "I am your all." Finally, as I let my guard down and stop listening to the other voices telling me I can't do, I realize what this means. I am your rock, your foundation, and your emotional security. I am the one that knows you, understands you, and motivates you. I am your all and all that you need.
This does not mean that I have all the answers or that we will not always our moments because you love to test, push, and challenge me daily. It does not mean that we do not need the help of specialists for your speech, occupational, and physical therapies and that yes, you will still have to go to see these lovely people. What it does mean though is I am your mom and I know what is best for you. I know when you have reached your limit. When someone is not a good match and when we need to pull back. Most of all I am able to provide you an education. To allow you to trust and grow in your educational needs on a level that providers, other teachers, tutors, and therapists cannot. It has only taken us five different school placements, handfuls of teachers, and multiple consultants for me to finally take the advice of someone who knows me the best. I am all you need and I am your all.
You are an extremely bright and motivated child that loves to use manipulation and behaviors to escape the demands of education from others. With me though, you want to show me what know. You want me to clap for you, praise you, and brag about how smart you. You do not see this motivation in others and it requires a level of trust that we honestly do not have time to wait for. Recently you have shown me that you are reading sight words, that you have an understanding of sentences as you fill in missing words, that you can sort by beginning sounds, understanding rhyming, and can answer comprehension questions after a book is read aloud. You are honestly bored, waiting to be challenged and waiting for the world to rise to your expectations instead of us waiting for you to rise to ours. We are discovering that you are performing well beyond where we thought you were and that this coming year could be a lot of exciting changes.
You are challenging me to find ways to teach a child with limited expressive vocabulary to read. I mean seriously, how do you demonstrate reading using an AAC device? Well, we are about to find out! You are challenging me to think one step ahead. To know always have the new set of academics ready because you probably already know the answers to the ones in my hand. You are challenging me to find new opportunities in the community for you - lets just say a full day summer camp and horseback riding lessons ought to wear you out in the coming months. You are challenging me to think about what is functional and important to your future versus what I want you to learn. You area also challenging me to rethink our interactions, my parenting, and what the future may hold for us. These challenges are so different from three years ago when instead you were challenging me by throwing yourself down the stairs or barking like a dog 24/7.
So, you and I will continue to put one foot in front of the other and create our own path. One day I will write the book from my perspective and I am sure you will fill in your opinions on how crazy I really was as your mother. We truly are taking "The Path Less Often Taken" and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Keep on Truckin
Love
Mom
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