Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Autism, Special Education, and ADHD Awareness Month

The month of April has been set aside to bring awareness to Autism Spectrum Disorder, Special Education, and Attention Deficit Disorder and Hyperactivity.  All of these important words have significance in my life.  I vow to bring awareness to all of them and bring us all together to appreciate all people and all of their special talents.

When your children are born, no one expects to sit across a table and have someone say to them, "Your child has Autism".  No one wants to hear "Your child would benefit from services provided in the special education program."  No one wants to hear, "We have eliminated all other possibilities and your child meets enough criteria to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder."  I have a degree in Elementary Education.  I have had the college level classes on all of these diagnosis.  I have sat at a table when I have had to tell a parent each one of these phrases as an educator.  But let me tell you this:  NOTHING that I learned in college, or as a teacher prepared me to hear these words about my own child.  After all, my children are perfect in my eyes.  I thought I would birth the straight A student, the honor roll kid, the valedictorian, the quarterback of the football team, the star soccer player, the softball player with the full ride scholarship, didn't you think you would birth these children?  I was taught so much more by my children about what "perfect" really is.  For this, I am grateful.

If you are unaware of my oldest daughter's situation, go back and read the blog post titled Witnessing a Modern Day Miracle.  Two different times, in the second grade and again in the sixth grade I was told that she should be held back.  I knew that it would damage her self esteem and that her academics would be in no better condition by repeating than being moved to the next grade with her friends.  It was a gut feeling, but in the end, my gut was right.  Had I allowed them to hold my daughter back, she may very well have ended up dropping out of school or had such low self image that she would have never recovered.  The fact is that the school was judging my daughter's ability to climb a tree when she was actually a fish and was good at swimming.  Had I played into the school's hand of cards, the outcome would have been so different than it is.  My daughter was diagnosed with a language processing learning disability in which we were told she could not get to her hand what was being processed in her head to write it down on a piece of paper when in reality, she couldn't hear what was being said so it took her so long to process and piece together what had been said in to something that made sense.  In the meantime she was labeled "stupid", or "special ed", or "dumb blonde".  So many times over the years I wanted to bang my fist on the table and ask if they noticed how intelligent my girl was, or how great a Christian young lady she was, or what a great friend to others she was?  All the while we judge others on the world's scale when we need to be judging on God's scale and accepting everyone and their rainbow of differences.  Instead it seems that we judge everyone based on the world's scale and expect all the fish and the squirrels to climb the tree exactly the same.

We all need to realize that no one is dumb.  That we all are varying degrees of smart.  After all, God made us all perfectly the way He wanted us to be.  Autistic, Learning Disabled, Attention Deficit Disorder, Hyperactivity:  these are all labels created by man to describe people who don't seem to be able to climb trees like the squirrels can.  Indeed, we should put the squirrels in the pool and see how well they can swim.

Now that is a point to ponder.

During the month of April, Awareness Month for labels that man has created for our fish who can't climb trees well, let us all take time to realize that all are smart.  Let us teach our children to not only be proud of straight A's, but to be more proud of our work ethic.  Let us appreciate the colorful world that God made with all sorts of birds, fish, cattle, etc.  And let us never judge a cow on it's ability to fly, or a squirrel on it's ability to swim.  Only then will we create this awareness that we so desire.

Please look at this you tube video.  Copy and paste it in your browser.
http://youtu.be/YR26oxIoz68







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