Trees can be Sappy, but they are worth the climb

              As I study the calendar day after day in planning the activities that make up our days, I look forward to the empty days.  Appointments, birthday parties, school projects and trips, we need down time.  I do mean WE, as in every member of our family.

               I always have great intentions over long weekends, spring breaks and the summer vacation to visit friends, have lots of play dates giving our children plenty of social interactions.  Honestly, I think my subconscious protests scheduling anything at all.  The Friday came before spring break and the next thing I knew we woke up to another week and it was back to school again.  When I look back, we hardly saw a person outside of our own family for the entire week.  I did see a lot of family time, playing, sleeping in, and eating a lot! Those LEGOs got a lot of miles on them.  And just getting a break from the hustle seemed better than interacting with friends.

               When a child has special needs, the weeks get packed pretty quickly.  We don’t participate in sports or take music lessons.  I’ve tried swimming lessons, gymnastics and piano lessons, we eventually have to start scheduling make ups that run into the next month and we ‘take a break’- an extended break.  Add in between colds and blizzards and we can hardly keep ahead of schedule.

               Why is it that our week’s priorities are therapy appointments?  How can I balance the therapy with normal childhood activities? 

What I’m coming to realize is that I have been ‘fixing’ my child to meet the needs of the school and not the school meeting the needs of my child.  SPD is being looked at as something that can be fixed or altered with enough therapy so that the child will eventually fit in with the other children.  This is not so cut and dry.  There is quantitative evidence, meaning we can put our finger on it, that SPD exists in the physical disability realm.  SPD’s evidence exists in the brain, the neurological processing and can’t be altered with a dose of medication (of of yet, unless you treat it inappropriately as just ADHD), so it is considered a mental health issue.  It can become a mental health issue when we don’t give it its physical disability value.

               There are many other neurological disorders that are classified as physical disabilities, but their symptoms show up in other areas of the body creating limitations of mobility.  A big push right now is for SPD to be in the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders).  While some blindness and deafness extends beyond the mechanical parts (eyes and ears) they are considered physical disabilities.  SPD is not, per our experience in the school system.  The symptoms of SPD tend to be labeled as behavior, as if the affected child chooses how he or she physically responds to the environment. 

               So we have given our son opportunities to improve himself, so he better fits in at school, becomes a more productive child and requires less attention of the teacher.  Something does not fit here.  He is bright, as many children with SPD are, he has met all of her academic goals of the year despite the behavioral label he was given.  We, as his parents, gave into the needs and wants of the school instead of sticking up for him as in individual. 

               I put my foot down at some point.  I saw that while he was more productive, less distracted, he was less creative.  The child I knew who had many ideas all at once big and bright in his head now was a duller sheen.   He was happy and working out his emotions better, this we liked for us and for him.  What we were losing were so many great things about him, his special ‘ism’ that made him distinct from others. 

               I’ve always known that when a less admired character trait is lost, sometimes it takes a good trait with it, thus changing a person for better and worse all the same.  I am missing those parts of him and we hope to find some of them again when he is given a new opportunity to be himself.  Sometimes it is not the person that must change, but the change must be for the person, so that person can flourish.  We all need sunlight to grow and blossom, and the right school can be that sunlight a child needs to grow, and grow as they are.

               A child with SPD has so many great and special qualities; let us let them shine, noting that with some of the quirks comes the beauty.  As a parent I changed, trying to fit in and attend those birthday parties and sporting events with pride written all over me, though my teeth grinding over shadowed it.  I will have to let my pride shine, even when my child has climbed to the top of a tree during a family picnic to see all around us.  He sees what the rest of us fail to try to see, he tries to defy gravity, which seems to be against the rules.  It takes climbing that tree to get a better view point instead of clinging to the safety of the ground where everyone else is.

               I invite you up a tree, sap and all, to find your better view point and along the way I hope we can find the change for our kids instead of changing them for the rest of us!