The Champion Your Child Needs You to Be

An open letter to parents of special needs children:

Dear Mom & Dad,

You are amazing! You may not realize it yet but you are.  Life probably hasn’t worked out the way you expected it to but you can pick up the pieces and make something wonderful out of them. Summon every bit of courage you have and keep moving forward remembering that courage is not the absence of fear but action in the face of it.

Look for help and support in your community, it is probably there, not always easy to find but if you search for it, it will be found. NEVER EVER be afraid to ask for help.  Sure, the answer you get may sometimes be no, but do not let that deter you.  Keep asking, keep looking, keeping dreaming of the best life your child could possibly have and let that be a driving force.  Your child needs you to be their champion.  You may not be the expert on their diagnosis but you ARE the expert on your child, you know them better than anyone else does.  So do not be intimidated by service providers, their’ experience, their’ fancy degrees.  These people are usually fabulous resources and can be great advocates for you and your family, but if something isn’t working, say so.  If you need direction, answers, support, do not hesitate to ask for it. Use what is helpful and ignore what is not.

The way you see your child’s special needs and react to them, will set the example for how others respond to your child. The teachers your child comes in contact with probably are not experts on your child’s diagnosis either, and that’s okay.  Educate them about what your child’s special needs are, how they affect your child. Let your child’s teacher know your child’s strengths and weaknesses. If you have strategies that help with their weaknesses, share those.  You may have had to set aside the expectations you had for your child when you discovered their special needs, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have hope. Inform the people who work with your child what your hopes and dreams and goals are for them.  Inspire them to believe in your child as you do.

Your job raising a child with special needs is probably one of the most difficult things you will ever do.  But it can also be one of the most gratifying.  Remember to take time for yourself, yes I know this can be difficult to arrange but do whatever you can to make it happen. It is not a luxury that you can’t afford; it is a necessity that you can’t afford to do without.  You effectiveness in your child’s life is largely dependent on your emotional well being which requires rest and breaks and time away occasionally.  Do your best to build a support group around you that can help you with the needs of your entire family.  Make time for your spouse and if you have typical children as well, do everything you can to spend one on one time with them, and teach them to love and care for their sibling.  If you are so wrapped up in the needs of your special needs child that your spouse and other children feel their needs are ignored or overlooked, they could feel resentful toward that child. Help them to want to be a champion for their sibling as well.  

Know that God sees you and loves you beyond all measure.  God didn't give you a special needs child as some form of punishment.  In fact, the opposite is true, God has entrusted you with a very precious child and He is there for you to lean on.  Trust Him, let Him be your peace and your guide and your strength.  Allow Him to show you great & mighty things in the journey of special needs parenting and remember that His idea of great & mighty things are often quite different than ours.

I know, it is all so overwhelming and seems difficult to balance and manage everything. But you can do this.  Believe in yourself, rise to the challenge, don’t give up, don’t feel guilty for needing help, ask for it! Do not be intimidated by people who do not know your child as well as you do, make your voice heard.  Hope for the best, dream big dreams for your child.  You CAN become the champion your child needs you to be!

Sincerely,

A parent who has been there.

Object Lessons

Object Lessons

Have you ever noticed times in your life when God teaches you something.  It starts with a Bible verse and upon meditating on it you have this nugget of wisdom that you can use and share.  I happen to be a slow learner at times, so God will often follow that up with an object lesson for me. 

I had one of those ah ha moments just this week. God impressed upon me that it is a good trade when we bring our frustrations to Him in exchange for His peace.  So I shared it with others.  And then came the object lesson.  I had been working very hard on a new batch of my mosaic clay crosses for an upcoming craft show.  They are a little labor and time intensive so I was only able to get about fifteen of them completed.  And I had favorites, a beautiful purple and lavender one and a gorgeous green.  The story behind these crosses is that when we bring God all of the pieces of our life, the pretty ones and the broken ones, He makes something beautiful out of them.  I stored them on the table in my home studio and late in the evening, just before bedtime, my cat became overly curious exploring the table and knocked five of them off the table, including my two favorites, and three of them were destroyed. As you probably have suspected, my two favorites were in those destroyed and boy was I ever frustrated.  “All that hard work, all that lost income, all that waste” were the thoughts that began to run through my head. The irony of broken crosses designed to show how God transforms brokenness into beauty stung me just a bit. 

And then God so graciously reminded me of that very thing He’d impressed upon me earlier that same day, “Bring me your frustrations, exchange them for my peace.” I don’t know about you, but sometimes the concepts are so much easier to grasp for me than the practical applications are.  So God gives me a chance to practice what He has taught me.  His peace can accomplish so much more in our lives than a temporary frustrations ever could.  By trading those in for His peace, we are trading sorrow and anger for joy and hope. I would much rather walk out my days in the latter.

My prayer for you this week is that you will see opportunities to exchange your frustrations for God’s peace, that you will hear the lessons He has for you to learn, and when given the opportunity to put those into practice, you will be able to do so easily.

Many Blessings,

Cherry Fargo

cherryscreations.etsy.com

One of THOSE Days!

So this morning was one of THOSE mornings for some reason. I did get up on time, got the kiddos up on time but they were dragging. Not one of the four of them was ready on time. No amount of politely asking them seemed to do the trick so I moved on to being firm and logical about the benefits of good choices and the consequences of bad choices. I am sure by the way they responded all they heard was blah blah blah blah blah.

Completely frustrated (me that is) we finally walk out the door ten minutes late only to discover my van had a nice coat of frost over all the windows and my oldest two children fighting over whether or not you could scrape ice with a squeegee, one with the handle in their hand and the other with the actual squeegee part in their hand. ***Deep sigh***.

Hubby, who is also running behind, emerges from the house ready for work and begins to help me scrape ice, so very thankful for him, my visual example of sanity and peace in the midst of chaos. Okay, all done, we're finally pulling out of the driveway only 20 minutes behind schedule.

The children are all complaining they are going to be late now and when I remind them that none of them were ready on time, someone decides to snidely point out that if I had only started the van earlier so it could have warmed up, and then all I heard was blah blah blah blah blah.

Once all of them are safely at school and no one is tardy and no speeding tickets were involved, I begin to pray while am driving. I am praying for peace and for forgiveness for being so short tempered and for wisdom on how to make these mornings go more smoothly. (We have assigned them check off lists and charts and graphs galore with incentives to help them stay on track, all to no avail. )

So I am taking these few minutes of quiet to try to regroup when I notice a car that has gone of the road and into the ditch with a pretty steep embankment. With the rain that we have had, I know that car is not coming out of that ditch without a wrecker. Then out comes a young man who runs up the slope around to the driver side and opens the door for the young lady who was driving, she is visibly shaken. I roll down the window and ask if they are okay, and they are, grandparents have been called and on the way, young man is going to walk to school. I offer him a ride because it's cold and because I know if he walks he will be late.

As I turn around and take him to school I learn the driver is his sister, a junior in high school who has only had her license for a few months. I asked him again if he was okay, questions like did you hit your head on anything, are you feeling light headed or dizzy, you know the over protective mama kind of questions, I hope another woman would do the same if it were my child. He seemed to be calm, cool and collected, I encouraged him to call his grandparents or go to the nurse if he started feeling badly as I dropped him at the door of the school.

On the way home again, thinking about how the morning has unfolded and all of the sudden I am deeply ashamed of how frustrated I had been about being so far behind schedule because I realize that God had me right where he needed me to be all along, on his schedule, to be able to offer a few comforting words to a couple of high school kids in a scary situation and to do my part, albeit little, to help out.

Lord, help me to rest in the knowledge that you hold my every moment in your hands, all have been ordained by you, and you have a plan for all of them.