Becoming Independent

I think it is hard for most parents to let go and allow their children to become independent.  Being supportive as your child learns to explore choices, make decisions,and possibly make mistakes is one of the challenges of being a parent.  Our ultimate goal is independence but after eighteen years of supervising, nurturing, and protecting it's hard to watch your children take those first flights of freedom.  Those steps have been pretty easy with my oldest child.  He is a relatively cautious and responsible individual.  With a year of high school under his belt, we have started exploring dating, working, managing money, researching colleges, and the early preparations for driving.  It has gone fairly smoothly.  Our role as his parents has been to act as a support system offering advise and boundaries.  When given options, he almost always chooses good ones.  I pray he continues to grow into the good strong man that he seems to be becoming.

Unfortunately, I find it so much harder to step back and allow my youngest son to take those same steps towards independence.  At each step of his journey, he has had to push back and assert his need for independence in order for me to grant it.  With my oldest son, I encouraged it.  I welcomed it.  I trusted that he could handle it.  It grieves me that I can't give my youngest son that same trust and latitude.  His independence is one of my greatest goals and desires.  Ten years of protecting him, supporting him, and guiding him has become a habit I'm finding very hard to break.

As summer draws to a close and our son prepares to transition to middle school, he has voiced a desire to stop attending out-patient speech and occupational therapy.  He loves his therapists but it is his desire to start middle school like everyone else.  He wants to join band and chorus.  He wants to attend camps and activities like all his same age peers.  I want that for him as well.  I want him to blend. I want his transition to be a smooth one.

I'm afraid.  I fear that he's going to need the support of his therapy team now more than ever.  In the past, stress has increased his stuttering and blocking.  Stress makes him more clumsy, less focused, and more prone to angry outbursts with us.  It also increases his night terrors and sleepwalking.  His therapy team has been a secondary support through these challenging times.  It is easier for him to take direction and instruction from them, than from us.  They can tell him the same information that we have shared with him but he listens to them because they don't live with him every day.  My biggest fear is that his desire for independence will sever him from a support that he is going to desperately need.

On the other hand, he has shown growth.  He is learning to advocate for himself.  While undergoing the school evaluation for his new IEP this year, he talked openly and honestly with the school psychologist about his strengths and weaknesses.  He showed an awareness of who he is and what he needs that was surprising but encouraging.  In recent weeks, he has had very candid conversations with his therapists about his concerns about transitioning to middle school.  That openness is also encouraging.  When I asked him to pick up the Legos in his room so that I could vacuum his floor, he told me he would pick up and vacuum.  He wanted to clean up all by himself.  It took twice as long and wasn't nearly as thorough as when I do it but this desire for independence was extremely encouraging.  He is voicing a desire to do more for himself more frequently.

I have many fears regarding our son's transition to middle school.  There are so many factors that are out of my control.  On the other hand, he is trying to rise to the occasion and become the independent young man he is going to need to be in middle school.  So ultimately, I need to respect his wishes.  At the end of summer, we will take a break from therapy.  We will transition to middle school prepared with knowledge and skills from his therapists, past and present.  We will develop organization systems to help him manage himself and his materials.  We will stay in contact with his new school team and attempt to handle problems as they arise, rather than further down the road.  We will also pray.  A lot.

Finding Answers and Helping Others Along the Way

As my husband and I have made our journey with our youngest son, several questions have continued to bother me.  I am often stuck asking "What happened?", "Why us?", and "Will it ever get better?"  I am starting to come to terms with the first question.  We will never know.  I didn't drink, do drugs, or live in a dangerous environment.  I did all the things that we were supposed to do.  Genetic testing has shown a duplication on his one chromosome but it is a chromosomal abnormality that he shares with his father so that isn't the source of his developmental challenges.  The last question is starting to become clearer as well.  Yes.  It is getting better.  He is growing and developing and maturing.  What will his long term "normal" be?  I don't know yet.  Today, I got a small glimpse of what the answer to the second question may be.

Our son and I were at the local hospital for his weekly speech therapy and occupational therapy sessions.  They are currently scheduled back to back resulting in an hour and a half therapy block.  Because I just finished my school year a week ago, I am a few days late starting my summer online course that I am scheduled to complete during the month of July.  I figured this therapy block would be the ideal time to put a serious dent in my classwork.

About halfway through the therapy block, his first therapist tracked me down to fill me in on his progress this week.  I was surprised when we arrived today because I had been told that the summer schedule would result in a therapist change due to a scheduling conflict.  When she came out to talk, she filled me in.  She refused to give up our son on her therapy schedule because she loves him and feels they have made a lot of progress.  She told them they needed to rearrange her schedule so that she wouldn't have to lose him.  I relayed to her that I was very grateful.  Our son has a lot of anxiety at the moment as he anticipates his transition from elementary school to middle school.  She shared that he had discussed that concern with her during their speech session.  We both agreed that was a big step for him.  There was a time in the past when he had trouble identifying why he was upset or what the cause of his anxiety may be.  Now he can identify the source and problem solve ways to cope.  These are great strides.  He his growing in his confidence and in his communication skills.

Through our conversation about my son's anxiety, we started talking about concerns that his therapist has with her son.  Although her son does not have developmental issues like my son and is much younger, some of the behaviors and experiences she shared sounded like our journey in the early stages.  Concerns about what is really wrong.  What do you do about it?  How do you as a couple feel about it?  Are your feelings about and methods of coping with the situation compatible and more importantly conducive to helping your child through his problems?  So many of the fears, feelings, and thoughts she shared were fears, feelings, and thoughts that I had experienced years before.  I was able to share with her that I understood.  I had stood in her shoes.  I had also felt that way.  My husband had been there.  His growth as a man and a father has been profound and humbling.  He is a different man, a better man, than he had been ten years ago.

Several times through our conversation, she appeared close to tears.  She looked tired.  She looked overwhelmed.  I know if I had looked in the mirror ten years ago, five years ago, maybe even a couple months ago, I might have looked the same.  She told me our conversation gave her hope.  It let her know that it might get better.  It let her know she wasn't alone.

So maybe the answer to that second question "Why us?" was part of God's bigger plan.  He wants us to share our story to help others.  He wants us to grow as people but he also wants us to bring others along on our journey.  Maybe our biggest challenges, fears, and hurts were meant to help others grow as families and to bring them closer to God.  I know our journey has done those things for me.  Our conversation today may have left her with a feeling of hope but it also helped me put our life into perspective.  It allowed me to take a step back and see how very far we have come.  The progress we have made.  The strength we have gained.  If that is his purpose, I pray he continues to maneuver me and grow me as he would want me.  I pray he gives me the strength to do his work.