By Barbara Pierce
I had a child with special needs. I had a child who was very challenged and very challenging to raise.
I use the past tense purposely. I still have a child. Liz is now a middle-aged adult with no special needs. A child who grew into an adult as a great, totally normal woman, mother, wife, employee and daughter.
I feel truly blessed to have her and my grandchildren in my life. Though it wasn’t always that way.
“No! I won’t! And you can’t make me!” She often hurled these words at me with all the fury in her small body. “You’re so mean to me! I hate you!”
That was a typical day.
Diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder, she was difficult to parent. That was only one of her diagnoses; she had several.
Liz had an individualized education plan developed by a team at her school. To me, it really didn’t really seem to help her at all. She had some special education classes and some regular classes.
She saw a children’s psychiatrist who prescribed heavy-duty medication. She didn’t like the way it made her feel. I didn’t like giving it to her as I worked in a mental health clinic and knew medication. I threw it away.
The psychologist who assessed her said she had a learning disability. I remember him saying: “Her brain doesn’t have the ability to understand words. It’s like you’re speaking Chinese; she can’t understand you. And she can’t understand written words either.”
He diagnosed her with attention deficit hyperactive disorder, a common learning disability.
I knew she had serious problems when I helped her with her homework. There was a simple story: two boys stole a rowboat. They rowed out to the middle of the lake. The boat sank. The boys swam to shore. Those sentences were mixed up and she was to put them in order. She couldn’t begin to figure out the sequence.
We saw a psychologist weekly for therapy. Sometimes she did play therapy with Liz, sometimes the three of us met together, sometimes me alone. It definitely helped me get through those difficult times. I think it also helped her.
Liz didn’t have friends; she didn’t know how to play with other kids.
I remember her ninth birthday party. I invited some of the neighborhood kids. She spent the party crying alone in her room. I was so sad for her. Every child should have at least one friend.
In the third grade, she refused to go to school at all, claiming to be sick with a stomachache. Her anxiety about school was definitely real. She didn’t go to school for several weeks, instead came with me to work.
She dropped out again in high school. As she left for school on her bicycle when I left for work, I had no idea she wasn’t going to school, until I went to an open house for parents. One teacher said: “Liz is a pleasant girl, but we hardly ever see her here.”
She did graduate from high school, thanks to a boyfriend who encouraged her to do what she had to do and helped her study.
I didn’t know much about parenting a child with special needs. Truthfully, I didn’t know anything. And there was no internet. I wasn’t able to look up my questions and get advice.
As a mother, I made a lot of mistakes. I did the best I could. I got through those difficult days and years, sometimes just minute by minute.
I remember a conversation I had with my friend, Maria, who understood me well. On a day Liz was particularly difficult, I said to Maria: “I can’t do this! It’s just too hard! I just can’t do it!” Her reply: “Oh, but you are doing it.”
That phrase “You are doing it” has stuck in my mind over the years. I hear it when I get stuck and feel like giving up. I was doing what I had to do and I made it through.
My purpose in sharing this is to give you hope if you’re raising a child with special needs.
Hope that, in the end, things will get better for you. I give you so much credit for raising your child as best you can. I give all parents so much credit, as raising a child is never easy.
If you’re raising a child with special needs, my heart goes out to you. It is very difficult. At times, you feel like giving up. But you know you can’t; there’s no giving up. You just do what you have do, day by day. Hour by hour. Minute by minute.
You’ve got this. You’re doing it. And it just may all work out okay for you in the end.
Barbara Pierce is a retired licensed clinical social worker with many years of experience helping people. If you would like to purchase a copy of her book, “When You Come to the Edge: Aging” or if you have questions for her, contact her at barbarapierce06@yahoo.com.