[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

The Camp

In the big classroom, I sat with the other parents in a wide circle 
around the 30-odd kids who were sitting on the floor in four teams, 
wearing (respectively) green, purple, blue, and red t-shirts. It was 
the closing ceremony for the two-day camp for learning-disabled 
incoming students, held by our local college. They'd slept in dorms, 
played games, heard about what resources would be available for them 
as LD students, and (above all) been together with their peers. They 
were no longer alone.

Their experience of school had mostly not been happy. In some cases, 
it was downright brutal. My own two kids weren't diagnosed with LD 
until far, far too late. Trying to go to school with learning 
disabilities is like having to hold down a job that you can't really 
do, can't improve at, didn't choose, and can't quit -- and you 
constantly hear that you're the problem. At least that's what we'd 
experienced. And this is the kid's first job in the world, and she 
has to start when she's only 5 or 6 and she's stuck for the next 12 
years, while her personality is forming.

If it's brutal for the kids, it's awfully hard on the parents. You 
have to turn in your ordinary expectations for expectations that the 
kid can actually meet, and sometimes this means swimming upstream 
against the conventional current. You also have to leave your 
parental ego at the door. Yes, Amanda *should* be able to remember 
her homework, but Amanda has attention deficit disorder and virtually 
no short-term memory, so that's just not going to happen and what 
will we do next? The teacher looks at you and you feel judgment in 
her eyes: if your kid isn't achieving, somehow it has to be your fault.

And then there are the grandparents, the neighbours, the friends, all 
with "helpful" advice that doesn't work because they're assuming that 
the kid is just lazy or stupid or unmotivated when in fact, the kid 
is trying to run as fast as possible with invisible leg shackles. 
Family reunions? "Great news! Kevin didn't fail Grade 9!" -- when in 
fact this is a humungous achievement for which Kevin deserves major kudos.

And then there are those who think that LDs don't really exist: "Your 
kid is just manipulating you and you're enabling for it. Let the kid 
fail and he'll learn to pull up his socks and do better." Yeah. 
Right. As though the kid needs his parents siding with the opposition.

All of us in this big room, parents and kids, had suffered through 
this, some of us worse than others. It felt wonderful, though, to 
know that all the others in our circle knew something about our 
struggles. I sensed that the love of parent for child in this room 
was perhaps deeper and tougher and stronger *because* we'd gone 
through such hard times with them.

I don't think God plays favourites, any more than a good parent does. 
I like the phrase that William Paul Young puts in God's mouth: She is 
"especially fond" of every single one of us. But for those of us who 
have suffered with our suffering children, maybe the bond has a 
little more intensity and depth. I think God sits with families in 
trouble and weeps, because God's been there, done that, got the scars 
to prove it. God knows about having a suffering child, up close and personal.

The woman sitting next to me -- a beautiful woman, with delicate 
features and lovely silver-streaked dark hair -- glanced down at her 
son, who was almost at my feet. It was pretty obvious from his 
behaviour that he was autistic. He needed to move into and out of the 
group, and she tracked him without anxiety but with practiced care, 
and her eyes were unworried and full of tenderness. This is, I think, 
perhaps how God looks on us in our brokenness.

The kids were playing a game in which they had to pass things left or 
right at high speed. The boy with autism was having real problems, 
and I found myself whispering to him, "No! No! *Other* left," and a 
woman behind me laughed softly, in recognition.

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For all parents with kids facing serious challenges in school, but 
especially for other mothers. Pass it on!





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A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in 
no other way. -- Mark Twain