Stuck in a Muddle

Those first few minutes you hold your child are magical. They are smooth and fresh and unaffected. You see yourself mixed with your husband. You smell their fuzzy forehead and feel the extreme awe of all that is before you. Everything begins to hit you and you get sucked right in. You want everything for your child. Prom queen, valedictorian and sports star all in one. Mostly you want success for them. Success and happiness. Society puts the definition of success out there as following the herd and measuring up to the norm. If you don't fit into that mold you become different and lets face it, different is never easy. Fear and struggle plague those that see things from a unique angle...especially when it is a child. Especially when it is my child.

Imagine the frustration of looking at letters that are supposed to make up words and see jumbled out of focus blobs. Imagine your teachers and parents saying try harder or be more careful. Confusion and heartache over understanding that you aren't able to do the same thing everyone else is able to do. Seeing classmates getting patted on the back while you just can't quite get it. The extreme exhaustion of working twice as hard as everyone else to cover the same distance. Just feeling you are stuck in a muddle all the time. Then come the labels. Dyslexia, Specific Learning Disability, intervention. How do I make all this OK for my child? How do we change the measure of success for her in this world?

Revamping that measure of what makes success is hard. Having to prove that she is smart and talented in her own perception of the world becomes the focus.

Understanding the need to facilitate her ability to succeed is the most important thing. Remembering that she is blessed with a certain edge that other children don't have. Maybe it is a creative talent. Maybe it is lively imagination or a quick wit. But it is there, and it's something the rest of us don't have.