No, I am not coddling my child.

Parent Cafe
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<p>I am the very proud parent of two daughters. They are kind, funny, beautiful, determined, creative and smart. They also are not neuro-typical and have challenges which may put them on “the spectrum” depending on how that is being defined this year.</p>

<p>My youngest had the most visible challenges. She has tactile sensitivity to the point that I couldn’t hold her when she nursed, and even Hanna clothes bothered her. Since H worked swing shift I was forced to take her along on errands, and we left many a shopping cart at the checkout counter because she was overwhelmed with stimuli and had a meltdown.
Since those days she has come amazingly far and has persisted despite great difficulties.</p>

<p>However- her struggles haven’t gone away. Her brain didn’t decide to mend just because she looks fine from the outside. She is taking more than four years to finish her degree and that is not as important as who she is, and what she is learning. One qtr sophomore year she really took a hit when depression combined with her LDs proved too much and she was forced to withdraw. But she stayed for the next qtr, just taking a lighter load, which I am encouraging.</p>

<p>Some of my friends however were appalled. She “seems” fine when they see her, & they either don’t have kids, or have kids without LDs. I admit that I also have fallen into the trap when she seems to be having a lot of successes, that my mind tries & convinces me that now her troubles are over, and I can now just keep raising the expectation bar.</p>

<p>This is for all the parents and students who know just how thinly won some of those successes have been, and realize that no matter how slow the forward motion seems to be, it is still progress. Even when it doesn’t look like forward progress, but lateral or even stagnant, that may still be necessary to regroup/ heal or take a breather for what is coming next.</p>

<p>Happy Birthday honey, I love you.</p>

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<p>That is a very nice post.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t worry what other people think, including your friends…because they just don’t know what you and your daughter are going through.</p>

<p>Happy birthday to your daughter.</p>

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<p>Happy Birthday EK4’s DD!</p>

<p>:)</p>

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<p>EK, I love this post especially the last paragraph.</p>

<p>Happy Birthday to your D!</p>

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<p>Happy birthday to your DD, EK - and don’t let people who can’t mind their own business get you down.</p>

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<p>EK–what a wise and loving post. I can identify in a lot of ways. Hugs to you and your daughter, and Happy Birthday to her!</p>

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<p>I just gotta say…it’s 2012 (and a half) and it’s stunning to me that with all the open information there is now (compared to when we were kids and ‘bad things’ were left in the closet, and hush hush) that people STILL are outrageously judgmental and assumptive.</p>

<p>I personally have never been like that, my own D has never been like that (amen!), my immediate family has never been like that and my friends are not like that.</p>

<p>EK- kudos to you, your D and to everyone else who has dealt/is dealing with, issues we may or may not see on the outside. </p>

<p>Happy Birthday to both you and your D!! (it is after all your BIRTH day!!)</p>

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<p>Happy birthday to your wonderful daughter!</p>

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<p>Lovely post, and one to which I can definitely relate. Happy Birthday to you both!</p>

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<p>Awesome post and kudos to you and your daughter! Happy Birthday!</p>

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<p>Wonderful post – wise and true.</p>

<p>The world is an ass, to paraphrase Dickens. I would give those folks another thought. </p>

<p>On a drive along the Pacific coast from San Francisco to Monterey I saw cedar threes growing inland and ones growing right on the coastline, buffeted by the wind. Trees along the coast were battered and showed their experience in sculpted shapes; the ones inland were protected and were very regular in form.</p>

<p>I like the trees that had faced challenges better. They were interesting, distinctive and told the story of their lives.</p>

<p>Not everyone’s life is smooth sailing all the time; in fact, few people’s are.</p>

<p>I’m sure your DD is more compassionate and patient for her travails, traits that people on the outside can’t see either.</p>

<p>Happy birthday to your D and her loving mamma. And no, I agree with you. You are not coddling her.</p>

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<p>[Disorder</a> or Identity? by Juliette Guilbert](<a href=“http://brainchildmag.com/essays/winter2008_guilbert.asp]Disorder”>http://brainchildmag.com/essays/winter2008_guilbert.asp)</p>

<p>emeraldkity4 - I thought I would share this. I am not in a position to agree or not, but the author was my HS BFF and is one of the smartest people I know. She went to Reed (I think you have a Reedie) and a Yale PhD and is a local! She is one of those people who always loved to write and just makes everything interesting and informative.</p>

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<p>Op-- Happy Birthday to your daughter! Sensory sensitivities may lesson, but they don’t go away, as you know. She is lucky to have a mother who appreciates her strengths and honors her journey… And celebrates her accomplishments, as defined by her and not by some random timeline or social comparison. And I agree with the poster who remarked that the trees who had faced challenges were the more interesting and more beautiful. Thanks for reminding us of all of this at this season of graduations and celebrations.</p>

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<p>Just because you cannot see something, does not mean it exists (thus why some people would see her as “fine” when she has more challenges than most).</p>

<p>Happy birthday to her.</p>

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<p>saintfan, I read about a third of the article you posted. (It’s very long.) It’s very interesting and well-written.</p>

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<p>EK4-- Well written and so true. Congratulations for knowing that it’s all about the journey, not the destination. Keep ignoring the arbitrary mileposts set up by others.</p>

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<p>VeryHappy, it is very long article, but well worth the read. Admittedly, this is not something that I know about well first hand. I think that the author does a really nice job of addressing many strands of diagnosis, research, education and day to day life without staking out a position and holding fast just because. She is truly exploratory from the standpoint of trying to understand and help her own daughter to navigate life, but willing to ask questions, listen to answers from all sources.</p>

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<p>I read the article. It is competent and thorough. Not much in it is new, however. I deal with ADD (and ADHD and dyslexia and Aspergers on a daily basis.)</p>

<p>First, my S has ADD. Always has, and I suspect, always will. I can imagine a world in which it is a gift, but I don’t think he would feel that way. He said his first really comfortable day in school was the day he started medication in fifth grade.</p>

<p>He graduated from Williams College. Not an easy feat for a kid with ADD. His GPA took quite a hit, not because he couldn’t get A’s and B’s, but because he lacked the good judgement to choose a major he could really succeed at. He ended up with a B- average, but since he is so bright, this didn’t really set him up for the next stage of life very well, especially because he chose something he wasn’t good enough to pursue.</p>

<p>It has all worked out because he has found a new field at which he does excel, taken a few local undergrad classes, and has gotten himself into a Masters/PhD program in this new field.</p>

<p>I don’t think there’s a day he doesn’t find his ADD an annoyance that he medicates, or drinks heavily laced caffeine drinks or something like that.</p>

<p>He can do most low level math and reading tasks without medication, but not the more complex tasks his cognitive ability qualifies him for and he enjoys the most.</p>

<p>The one exception is playing the violin, but I’m pretty sure the ADD prevented him from developing the tone and mastery he could have had he not had it.</p>

<p>My other experience is from my students. At a community college we see kids who have crashed and burned at four year schools and have all these disabilities. I do find ways to maximize what they bring, like asking them to watch Kenneth Branagh act Shakespeare instead of trying to read it. But all of them struggle in some way.</p>

<p>The good thing is that many of them are already self-supporting, working in retail or restaurants, but they crave mastery at a different level. We do try mightily to help them attain it.</p>

<p>My S is very creative, but I don’t think his ADD made him that way.</p>

<p>My H’s ADD is worse because he had half a lifetime of maladaptive reactions to his ADD before I met him, and many of them are worse than the ADD.</p>

<p>For him, an understanding (and yes, acceptance) of who he was would have helped enormously.</p>

<p>I really support schools that don’t stigmatize the kids and support them in their strengths without penalizing them for their weaknesses, but I stop short of really believing that the disability is a gift, at least from what I’ve seen.</p>

<p>I don’t think my slow metabolism and life-long weight problem is a gift either, though it’s done a lot to define my life.</p>

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<p>yes mythmom - not new - written in 2008, so old. EK4’s post just reminded me of it in the balance and thoughtfulness, so I thought I’d share. Also, the author is local to our “town”.</p>

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<p>Very well said, mythmom. </p>

<p>“I stop short of really believing that the disability is a gift, at least from what I’ve seen.” My S2 has autism and it has defined his life. He was 13 when he understood that his “differences” had a name. Do I wish he did not have autism? Absolutely.</p>