Tag Archives: acceptance

Turning the page on reading

The thought that he won’t have the opportunity to experience reading leaves me sad. As a person who finds wisdom, adventure and joy in reading, coming to terms with my son’s situation has been…well, it hasn’t.

Sorry-grateful, regretful-happy

Two-plus years into life in Sweden and we are tapping into a service that didn’t exist for our son, with his complex developmental disabilities, in the US. It’s affectionately known in Swedish as kortis, which loosely translates as shorty, and is literally short for korttidsboende (short-term residence).

More kitchen table talk

So last night my 10-year-old child and I were sitting at the kitchen table filling out back-to-school paperwork, and they mentioned that they had had a dream in which their older brother didn’t have Coffin-Lowry Syndrome. They proceeded to tell me of the zany antics that can only ensue in a dream world. I’ve had a couple of dreams too in which he is neurotypical and I have woken up feeling shaken.

Wonder

I think sometimes we special needs parents are getting the wrong message. We’re told that if we want to be effective, we should be the mama bear — fierce and protective. Or the victim, sad and pleading. The course leader’s parable reminded me that I have other options, ones that actually might be more effective than anger or sadness.

Recombobulating

I think sometimes we special needs parents are getting the wrong message. We’re told that if we want to be effective, we should be the mama bear — fierce and protective. Or the victim, sad and pleading.
The course leader’s parable reminded me that I have other options, ones that actually might be more effective than anger or sadness.

Greetings from the other side

We arrived in Sweden to festive pomp and circumstance after disembarking our ship in England and hopping a short flight to Stockholm. Flags, streamers, champagne, hugs, dinner in the garden, even the cherry tree blooming on cue for our arrival…it was a reception in the truest sense of the word.

Prostration

Several years ago I heard a radio interview with a devout Jewish woman who had a practice of laying prostrate—face down on the ground, arms outstretched. She said she did it to remind herself that she was not in control of every little thing. She was in God’s hands.

In other faiths too, the act of laying oneself down is one of humility or surrender. While I might not share the beliefs from which this tradition springs, I do appreciate the value of acknowledging that I am not always in control.

Special needs eclipse

I can’t even capture the intensity of the dark feeling now, but it was there, even though the circumstances seem trivial now. In one flash I saw myself forty years from now tying his shoe laces, wiping his mouth and his bottom, and my mind did a high-speed rewind through all of the thousands of tying and wiping moments I’d have between then and now. Zero to despair and rage in sixty seconds. It was hot and black and tight.

Stages of grief and special needs parenting: Is acceptance all there is?

The stages of grief—the emotional progression following a loss made famous by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross—has often been applied to experience of special needs parenting. To those of you who aren’t raising kids with special needs this might seem really weird or just plain morose, ungrateful or unkind. I mean, nobody actually died, right? But although none …

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