Thank you to Snick and Ches for their comments. Yes, there are many steps forward, a few back have to be expected and taken for what they are -- just steps back in Julia's dance of healing and growing.
Julia's class went on a field trip to the Farmer's Market in the center of town today. They rode the city bus to get there, even transferred buses which the kids really liked. I heard one boy say that, "You can go anywhere on a city bus" Such a community minded soul. There may come a time when thinking like that will be necessary, and this generation might live that time.
Julia chose respberries as her treat at the Farmer's Market. I was very grateful -- lots of kids chose cookies and none of those were permissible on her diet. She even shared her berries with her friends, and I watched her interact so much more in such an appropriate way with the other kids. They are understanding and forgiving with her, granted, but she is getting closer to knowing what to do with peers.
But I saw her in school before the field trip as well, and she could not do her math work in the classroom. She had a small meltdown and Ginny took her into the room next door to the classroom that is set up as a sensory room. Julia jumped on the tamp for awhile and then was albe to do her work. Of course, this makes me wonder about home schooling. It makes me wonder about meds. It makes me wonder . . .
There is such a division inside of me -- part of me wants to do whatever I can to make Julia as NT as possible and get her caught up with her peers so that she can be like everybody else. And then, there is a part that knows for sure that Julia must travel on her own path and that my job is to make her as much of herself as she can be. That catching up with some vision of normalacy is not useful to her; that learning the way that other kids learn is just not for her. Where that will take us, I have no idea. And there is the rub -- the not knowing, the groping in the dark, the wondering why I cannot find that perfect, correct path. Oh, I have to get over myself!
A friend (Hi, Sherri!) started a new blog with the following:
I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time . . . Namely, that if you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you. And the life that you ought to be living, is the one you ARE living. --Joseph Cambell
How did I not take a course from that man when we were both at SLC?? But I have believed him for a long time in my head, and these days it has all become a reality. Like Julia, and my vision of Julia, I don't know where I am going. I am traveling, and sometimes traveling fast. Even then, the wait for a sighting of the destination . . . . Oh, the journey, that journey, how do I love the journey?
How often can I sa the same things?
1 comment:
If your goal is for Julia to have a happy life -- that is, one in which she finds fulfilling work and satisfying social and family relationships -- then you will do everything you can to help her catch up academically and achieve as close to neurotypical status as possible. As an adult, she will need to find her place in this world. Campbell was right -- one should follow one's bliss -- but that can only be accomplished after the items at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs are met. Julia will need to find work, friendship, and love, and she will need skills to find those things. Permitting or encouraging her to go off in her own direction is tempting because it is clear that she has many wonderful qualities that are unique to her -- her imagination, her artistic talent, her amazing smile. But it's no picnic being an outsider, even for neurotypicals whose differences are minimal. Be careful of romanticizing difference; it can be a very lonely place. Cultivate what is unique and beautiful about Julia while doing whatever you can (including appropriate medication) to enable her to live a healthy, normal life.
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