Joy enjoying the swing in the large motor room at school.

I had to get out Joy’s IEP to write this post and just having to find it in the file (meaning I don’t refer to it very often) made me appreciate again how pleased I am with Joy’s school team. I’ve heard many parents say they’ve need to fight to get their kids the services outlined on their Individualized Education Plan. Blessedly, we have not.

This is amazing because Joy’s IEP was written 10 months ago. That was 4 months before any of her teachers met Joy, and 4 months before it was scheduled to go into effect: September of 2011. This IEP was written 16 months before the next one (not yet written) goes into effect. So if our district interpreted Joy’s IEP strictly –as if it was a contract for services –it would not fit her well at all and I’d probably be frustrated.

I’m really grateful they don’t. And because they don’t (more about that later) I’m not sure how relevant the specifics are. But because I was asked to supply some, here it goes.

Joy qualifies as developmentally disabled. Her diagnosis is cerebral palsy, spastic quadriplegia type. She also qualifies as visually impaired. In our district, according to her IEP, Joy qualifies for:

• 4 consults per year from a teacher for the physically impaired, each visit 20 min. indirect
• 30 minutes per week of speech therapy: 10 min. indirect; 20 min. direct
• 4 days/week Early Childhood Special Education: 10 min indirect; 150 in. direct
• 30 minutes per week of occupational therapy: 10 min. indirect; 20 min. direct
• 30 minutes per week of physical therapy: 10 min. indirect; 20 min. direct
• 1 visit per month from a teacher for the visually impaired: 20 min. indirect

Joy goes to class with other special-ed. preschoolers; she is not mainstreamed. That subject deserves a post of its own because I’m philosophically on the mainstream page and several people were aghast that the district proposed a segregated classroom for Joy. Despite that, it is working out well.

Her class is very small. While I think the class capacity is six, there are only four kids enrolled and only three usually attend. With one teacher and two special-ed. paraprofessionals in the room (not to mention specialists like those listed above rotating in and out), the staff-to-student ratio is fabulous.

Most important, the staff is experienced and caring. They don’t need an IEP that dictates what to do and they don’t need Joy’s private therapists to set goals. In fact there is remarkable harmony between Joy’s private and school teams. I think this is because they are all intelligent and compassionate and are all singing off the same page: Joy.

Like you might remember Joy’s first experience riding a trike in private therapy a month ago. Then look at what Joy’s teacher emailed me last week from her new school physical therapist:

This wasn’t because I thought to tell the school team Joy had started riding a trike and it wasn’t because they follow this blog. Rather, two PTs independently arrived at the conclusion that Joy is ready to move up to the reciprocal leg pattern of peddling a trike.

To be clear, we don’t have all of our eggs in the basket marked “school.” Joy also has private PT twice a week (1 hour each), private OT twice a week (1 hour each) and private ST twice a week (45 min. each). This is not because we expected the district to offer her more services and did not. Rather, private therapy, more or less depending upon how much she could tolerate, has been part of the rhythm of her life since she was a baby and we added school to that routine.

Parents sometimes seem less impressed with an IEP when they are counting on school to provide the full level of services they believe their child needs. In that regard, we are also blessed. We have a great private insurance policy that is well suited to Joy’s needs. And we are able to buy into supplementary MA coverage that pays for full-time PCA services. Joy’s PCAs take her to most of her private therapy appointments and spend the session with her and the therapist. Thus her PCAs have become trained in therapeutic intervention, too.

Joy playing in a standing frame at school

Among her school team, her private therapists, her PCAs and us, Joy spends most of her waking hours playing with people who have a developmental agenda in mind. That’s not a bad thing. Unless she is sick, Joy enjoys all of it. And I am really beginning to see the benefits of her having to interact in order to get her needs met by different people in different settings. She loves routine and because cerebral palsy limits her access to the world, she would naturally settle into a life circumscribed by her physical abilities.

So back to role Joy’s IEP plays in her big picture. Her goals are so broad that they may seem almost generic. Things like:

• Joy will provide 1-2 word(s) to answer when question is asked
• Joy will express her feelings (happy, sad, mad etc.)
• Joy will have a two-way conversation with a peer or adult
• Joy will use her wheel chair independently to go from one location to another

However, because her school team genuinely cares about her, they use the freedom granted by broad goals to adjust and readjust their delivery system as needed to work on them.

I’m sure it helps my satisfaction level, too, that unlike when Joy first came home –when the full extent of her CP was not yet evident and we still didn’t know how much of her delays were the result of little early intervention in Korea –my husband and I now have a realistic picture of her developmental trajectory. Our expectations are realistic.  Joy is never going to “catch up” and it’s not anyone’s fault. It’s not like if her school team just tried harder, she would be ready to go to Kindergarten with her age peers this fall.

God is the only one who can heal her brain damage and he promises he will some day. But between now and heaven the best any of us can do is work with the abilities and gifts Joy has been given. More important than anything recorded on her IEP, her teachers enjoy her. Joy makes them smile. She makes them laugh. And because Joy knows they enjoy her, she is willing to work hard and to attempt new, challenging things. She is learning new things and growing and developing at school and outside it.

On her own curve to be sure. A curve that may or may not match the goals set a year ago on her IEP. But she’s made remarkable progress given that at the time her teachers and I formulated these goals, her development had regressed after surgery and six weeks in a body cast from which she was still recovering and none of us had any idea how she would do in a school setting.

So while I approached the IEP process with misgivings based on what I’d heard, my husband and I are very happy with how it is working for our family. Considering that there are maybe 13 or 14 more IEPs in her future, this is a wonderful way to begin.

P.S. If you live in MN and question whether your child’s IEP meet his needs and feel frustrated trying to make meaningful changes, PACER can refer you to a parent advocate who can help you consider your options. If your child is not yet on an IEP, PACER offers helpful classes (IRL and via webinar) that will help you understand the IEP process and use it advocate for your child.

In this post I’ll talk about my experience considering whether to write an IEP in a home school setting. In the next post, I’ll talk about Joy’s IEP in public preschool.

If your child isn’t school aged yet, you may still be familiar with the basic concept of an IEP from your experience the Family Services Plan under which your child receives Birth-Three services, or perhaps the goals set by your child’s private therapists. The IEP addresses similar things: the services and accommodations your child will receive and the goals he will work toward in a school setting.

In my state, home schoolers are not required by law to create IEPs. But even though the law here is home school-friendly, if you find that you are not doing your child’s yearly standardized testing at or near peer-grade level, you might want to consider writing an IEP for your private use now, and potential reference in the future if you ever need to justify your curriculum choices and accommodations.

Why? When a child is transferred from one school to another in our state, the home school is treated administratively like any other school. The new school is legally obligated to consider an IEP for the child if he is on an IEP at his or her previous school.

IEPs are the language schools use to communicate with each other about necessary accommodations. If your child doesn’t have a written IEP, the school is not obligated to take up the question of whether your child needs one until you raise the question. In practical terms means, this means the school must be convinced the child needs one.

I have zero doubt that if I showed up at a new school with Joy in her wheelchair without an IEP in hand, it would not be hard to convince the powers that Joy should be evaluated for an IEP.

But Hope’s disability is invisible. While I was making accommodations for her attention span and energy level as I taught her at home, when I considered the number and the magnitude of the accommodations I was making compared to those listed on Joy’s IEP, I wasn’t sure that Hope’s needs rose to the level of needing a written IEP.

To double-check my impression, I went to the Homeschooling Kids with Disabilities website and scrolled through their IEP templates (on the left sidebar under “accommodations.”) While I saw that I could write Hope an IEP (as her school, it was within my legal right), I didn’t think she would necessarily need an IEP at our local neighborhood school –which has classes structured to accommodate kids learning at different levels within the same grade. So I decided not to write her an IEP encoding the accommodations I was making at home.

IEPs do another important thing: they associate the child’s diagnoses and current levels of functioning with the accommodations necessary to help the child learn. So that question was still open: if Hope did not need an IEP, would I voluntarily disclose her diagnoses to the district? And if not on an IEP, then, how?

I asked the advice of the psychiatrist we were seeing and was advised us not to tell the school anything. I considered her rationale: that doing so might be unfairly prejudicial since Hope’s standardized testing scores indicated she’d likely do well academically. But I also considered that this doctor had not known our family very long, had opined that Hope’s reported alcohol exposure was “trivial,” had never seen her dissociate or rage, and was still entertaining the idea that Hope’s main problem was us, her parents.

I talked it over with my husband and we decided not to take her advice. It is not unusual that the early elementary years are easier (at school) for kids with FASD. They may not start struggling until later.  But what would I do if/when I thought Hope was struggling and I had not informed the school?  How could they participate intelligently as team-members in her education if my husband and I, the team leaders, withheld key information?

And I could not be certain she would not struggle, because among other accommodations home schooling families routinely make for their children is making curriculum choices suited to each child’s learning style. I could not be certain that Hope’s academic successes were not in part due to favorable choices we had made at home.

I also remembered our first three years of parenting –how baffled and frustrated we were before we gave up parenting her as if she was neuro-typical. I imagined the same thing could happen with Hope’s teachers. By the time we got to the point of considering an IEP, they might feel frustrated with her and negative about us withholding information that might have made a difference in how they tried to teach her.

So we decided to share.

Without an IEP, there was no obvious way to communicate Hopes diagnoses in writing. But we decided to take advantage of any natural openings, and if none of those presented, to talk directly with her teacher. Both happened. We were asked to complete an informal “Help Us Get to Know Your Child” form that asked about health and behavioral history. Then, at the end of Hope’s second week of school, I asked for a conference with her teacher and we talked about Hope’s diagnoses and what she was observing in the classroom.

In our case, disclosure was right, even without an IEP. Her teacher had already identified that Hope’s attention tends to drift and has relocated her desk to the front row. That’s an accommodation that could be written into an IEP. But her teacher didn’t need an IEP to make the change. She also noticed that Hope does better with executive functioning (like remembering to take her turn-in folder out of her backpack) with reminders. So she reminds her. The class room is already very structured –actually more so than home school because the teacher has 21 students to manage, not two. Hope was identified for reading intervention and along with a couple of other kids in her class who are also not on IEPs, she spends 30 minutes one-on-one with a reading teacher every day.

The teacher’s opinion…. Well, I can only guess about how she might have perceived Hope if we had not disclosed her diagnoses. Maybe things would be going well anyway. On the other hand, maybe the fact that she knows there’s more going on than meets the eye is helping her enjoy Hope’s successes. Hope is charming, doing well academically, fits in socially, and is not currently being triggered toward aggression or anger or disrespect by anything in the classroom or school environment. For the time being, she doesn’t need an IEP.

Hopeful that some of you waiting for EP news will find this information helpful –or at least diverting ! –I am cleaning up my travel notes  and creating this index post to make the information easier to use.

Planning Your Trip:

Visit Korea the official English website of the Korea Tourism organization

Best Spring Destinations in Korea

U.S. TSA: Travelers with Disabilities and Medical Conditions

My favorite trip itinerary and air transit with kids

When You Arrive:

Arriving at  Incheon airport

Exchanging Money and Renting a Phone

In Seoul:

Accessibility in Seoul (read this if you are planning to use a stroller or wheelchair)

Somerset Palace Hotel

Gyongbokkung Palace: photoessay

Go Gung: traditional Korean food in Insadong

Outside Seoul:

Taking the Train in Korea (KoRail and KTX)

The Korean Folk Village

A dream emblematic of a week spent doing this:

Editing my index.

After several days in a row of getting little more done than feeding my family and editing, I went to bed, fell asleep, and watched this unfold on my mental screen word by word:

“Your Name” (song): strong and mighty tower, is; shelter, is; nations sing, and; power to save, and; See also God, praise, worship

Then my brain began alphabetizing the clauses:

“Your Name” (song):  nations sing, and;  power to save, and; shelter, is; strong and mighty tower, is;  See also God….

And then I woke up.

This isn’t her imagination. Hope got glowing remarks for appropriate behavior at conferences.

Ever-curious about what helps her, I asked. “What makes it easier to control your feelings at school?”

“Because I’m afraid I’ll get into trouble,” Hope confided.

“What happens to kids at school when they get in trouble?”

“They get sent to the principal’s office,” Hope said. “Or they get sent to the pride room.”

“A pride room? I don’t think we had one of those when I went to school there. What’s a pride room?”

“I don’t know,” Hope said. “But I know I don’t want to get sent there.”

“Have you seen anybody get sent to the pride room?”

“Uh huh.”

“For what?”

“For falling in a puddle on the playground.”

“Really? Is that bad thing? To fall in a puddle?”

“It is when the lady just told everybody to stay out of the puddles.”

“And then what happened? After this kid fell in the puddle?”

“Then the lady said, ‘You go straight to the pride room with no lunch!’”

“No lunch?”

“Yep. No food in there. I think...” Hope said, clearly trying to figure out this rumored place everybody else probably heard about in detail from an assembly back in September.

I don’t know what the pride room is, but have deduced it is not a black hole of solitary confinement Hope contemplates. I think it sounds like the 21st century version of what we called “detention.” Remember? Like if you sassed the teacher, you got detention. If you forgot to do your homework, your teacher might send you to detention during recess to finish your work.

Yes: I will ask her teacher to fill me in on “the pride room.”

But I’ve been mulling it over because it fits one of my most-pondered thoughts: why is Hope’s behavior predictably good outside our home, but so unpredictable inside it?

Maybe a little bit of fear –acting on a mind that can tolerate a little –is a good thing.

Know how one of the mantras of FASD parenting is identifying each child’s strengths and building on those to help compensate for their deficits? One of Hope’s strengths is that her social IQ is equal to her base IQ. She is just a capable of correctly reading praise and displeasure from tone of voice, body language, facial expression etc. as a neuro-typical kid.

So she correctly perceived the public humiliation of the child who got sent to the pride room and also picked up on how her  friends reacted. And that negative social frisson is –so far –enough to cue her to do something I’ve not been able to teach her to do at home: to pull her emotional self up short before she steps over the line of dissociating into a meltdown or a rage.

If you have a child with FASD, you know what I mean. The name of the game for Hope has always been redirecting and diffusing to keep her well back from that emotional line.

Hope’s fear of being embarrassed in front of her friends is doing just that: keeping her far enough back from the line that she can cognitively exercise some control over her feelings. And because she’s stayed well-back from that line all day long, she is usually in a saner place when she gets home.

Many people have observed that drinking alcohol while pregnant is like playing roulette: the balls will fall somewhere; we just can’t predict where. Even twins who experience the exact same drinking pattern in uetero  have different outcomes in how it effects their brains. So I’m not suggesting sending all kids with FASD out to school would be helpful.

But I am observing one reason why, so far, it is working for Hope. She knows that we love her no matter what.  That excludes the members of our family from “society” –those people outside our home whose opinion she is internally motivated to cultivate. So in keeping her home for school, we inadvertently removed one of her unique supports from her toolkit –the social dynamic.

Of course, this means that as she grows we’ll have to pay unusual attention to the social dynamics she’s immersed in, knowing how motivated she is to conform socially.

About sixth grade, a Christian school with clear behavioral expectations for all students and a good stiff uniform policy comes to mind .

Like PBS’s History Detectives? Read on.

*****

Roughly a decade ago, a Blue Earth County Historical Society volunteer took a historian into the back room of their Mankato, Minnesota facility and unwrapped a huge wooden timber. The volunteer said it was reputed to be a beam from the scaffold that executed 38 Dakota men in Mankato, Minnesota on December 26, 1862.

The volunteer was unaware that this showing violated BECHS policy. When the historian (who is white) requested a second, closer examination of the beam through official channels, the historian was denied in writing on the grounds that the beam, as a relic of the 1862 executions, was a “sensitive” object that held sacred funerary significance for the descendants of those who died on it, so could only be viewed by Dakota people.

By the twenty-first century, I think the state’s historical societies would understand that the politically expedient –cover-ups, denials, administrative rulings –only make some historians more intent to discover the truth hiding beneath.

Sunday January 29, 2012, the subject of BECHS’s sequestered beam surfaced again in the opening article in Dakota War of 1862 sesquicentennial coverage in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In the article, reporter Curt Brown probed public opinion on the subject of another relic of the Dakota executions: a hangman’s noose sequestered in the bowels of the Minnesota Historical Society History Center in St. Paul where only Dakota people have been allowed to view it.

In the wake of the Strib. article, the Mankato Free Press, on Feb. 4, 2012 ran an article by Tim Krohn on Blue Earth’s own sequestered relic: the forbidden beam. Krohn’s article included a reprint of a 1927 newspaper story declaring the timber to be a beam from the 1862 scaffold. In it, the prescient reporter gave detailed dimensions and noted the remnants of a shipping tag affixed to one end of the beam.

Last week, Blue Earth County Historical Society (BECHS) Executive Director Jessica Potter took the 1927 specs to the back room and unwrapped the beam. The Mankato Free Press ran a follow-up story by Dan Linehan complete with photographs on Feb. 10, 2012.

Potter’s verdict: the beam does not match the 1927 description of the scaffold piece but may be an object described as an 1856 bridge timber accessioned by BECHS around the same time it acquired the piece of the 1862 scaffold.

However this bridge timber, as it is now identified, comes with a twist. Inside a small frame nailed to the end of the timber is an aged paper tag like the one the 1927 newspaper story attributed to the scaffold beam.

This story is missing pieces bigger than the hand-hewn notches in the timber.

BECHS once owned two beams. Between 1927 and 1987, Potter believes, the scaffold beam was lost and its tag switched to the bridge timber.

The beam they denied the white historian access to is nothing but an innocuous chunk of (likely) the wrong species of wood. An old hunk of bridge, that, it is said, modern Dakota people have wept and prayed over believing it to be a piece of the scaffold that executed 38 of their ancestors.

What makes something true? Denial? Belief? Tears?

That’s what makes history slippery.

It was true 150 years ago that relics of a grotesque execution were so treasured that one official planned to make a present of 38 nooses to his superiors in the nation’s capital who had authorized the mass hanging. Until a soldier detailed to remove the nooses from the necks of the executed Dakotas –the same guy who told this story –filched a noose, stuffed it inside his jacket, then slept with the knotted hemp like a giant pea under his mattress until the furor over the missing 38th noose subsided.

In the 143 years since the soldier donated the noose and its story to the Minnesota Historical Society, politically correct perceptions of “the truth” have made seismic shifts, especially in response to the American Indian Movement. MHS is now self-conscious about the things it once proudly collected and is scrambling to appear forthcoming about its past –we can hope including the collections and access policies it has a history of sealing, denying, deaccessioning, and legally covering-up.

A decade ago, why did not BECHS invite a historian with a measuring tape who had seen a photograph of scaffold beam into its back room and let the historian do what historians do? (The photo of the beam was subsequently lost by the Minnesota Historical Society.)

That’s the rub. If the people who collect history were routinely forthcoming, we historians would have to devote ourselves to more essential questions like, “What happened 150 years ago?” instead of following the rabbit trails and red herrings of forbidden objects locked in the basements of historical societies.

Why do historical organizations rebuff those who might help them make sense of their institutional past?

History suggests this new buzz-word, “truth-telling,” is inherently self-limiting.

*****

For the record, I am not the historian who was shown, then denied access to the BECHS beam. In the wake of MHS’s recent rediscovery of the noose and its accession story, I was invited to view the noose. I had not made up my mind about accepting when MHS removed the noose from the collection of potential exhibit objects open for comment. 

Hope’s self-portrait in torn paper: “I wit skating on the pond.”

Yesterday I had my first formal conference with Hope’s teachers (home room and reading specialist) and am happy to report she is doing very well in public school. Her home room teacher took advantage of a mid-year desk shuffle to move Hope from the back row to the front row, which she reports helps Hope stay focused. Her teachers love her and said she fits in beautifully.

Mercy has already finished 1.5 years of schoolwork since September and we’re both enjoying the stillness of the daytime hours when Faith, Hope and Joy are at school. She finishes her assigned schoolwork in about an hour and then just follows her nose.

This week her fascination is engineering a marble run –with a bit of masking tape for security against Daisy (the dog) who loves to swipe marbles. Each day Mercy has figured out something new about the dynamics and added more pieces.

It is now 8 feet tall and still growing. At about the 6 foot mark, this afternoon we took time off to bake sugar cookies. Kids are supposed to come home from school to cookies warm out of the oven, right?

Who switched my life?!

I’m going to enjoy this as long as God allows it to last.

According to my watch, that’s about 3 more minutes.

Let me tell you what I see.

First and foremost, his personality shines. The disposition you’ll see on this video is priceless. I think Alex has known love and has had his needs consistently met. Like Joy, it shows.

The question everyone probably asks when they view the video: what about his level of disability? The first thing that caught my attention is that he’s had a very good beginning. It seems highly likely that he’s received almost daily professional intervention for most of his life. That’s not typical with kids waiting for adoption and is a wonderful thing in terms of him being able to maximize his potential.

Do not read too much into the video. He is not necessarily playing with these toys because they mirror his cognitive level. Joy’s cognition is well ahead of her favorite toys. Her favorite toys are the ones she has the physical development to play with on her own.

Did you notice he can turn pages? That made my book-loving heart very happy.

Often physical delays come packaged with cognitive delays. Physical differences can limit the way these kids can interact with the world. The same neurological difference that challenge their physical development may challenge their cognitive development. This does not mean they do not learn and grow. You can see how engaged he is with his environment which is critical for learning. Joy is learning all the time, on her own curve.

What about dependency? Kids like Joy often qualify as “dependent” in all ADLs (activities of daily living) and they may never outgrow needing  help. However, the public service system is set up to the advantage of kids like Joy and it has worked very well for us. I’m sure states are different, but here Joy’s level of dependency qualifies her for slightly over full-time hours every week year round in PCA services. This is absolutely invaluable. So don’t imagine you’d be doing this alone. Ask yourself if your family could do this with a full-time nanny of your choice.

Since our family income is above the level that qualifies for free services, we buy into the system with a monthly payment based on a sliding scale. However unlike International adoption, this little guy comes with an adoption subsidy from his home state and my wild guess is that for most families, the subsidy would compensate for payments necessary to access services. And in his circumstance, Alex may qualify for free services regardless of your income.

What about insurance? The same system that gives Joy PCA services also covers expenses for her not covered by insurance. Again, being a domestic adoption, he may bring medical coverage with him.

What is it like living with a child who depends upon a wheelchair for mobility and always will? First, Joy is small so it is easier to carry her than you might guess from her age. You know we just moved into a house that can be made more accessible for a wheelchair user. It is not accessible right now. But by virtue of qualifying for the services mentioned above, we hypothetically have access to another program that provides up to $40,000 per year in necessary home modifications. We’re told competition is stiff for those funds but we’re working on putting together what we hope will be a compelling grant request.

It will be a while before we need a wheelchair accessible van because Joy’s low trunk tone means she still needs some recline in  her seat  in the car. Her wheelchair fits behind the back seat of our Toyota Sienna  minivan without collapsing the chair (important because hers has a custom-made seat that does not collapse). She will be 5 in March and is just now transitioning from a bucket style car seat sold for typical kids into a larger one made for kids with special needs. She will be able to use this new seat at least into her teens if she needs to. It is large –wider than the bucket seat we will have it on in the van.

It seems likely Joy may not be able to live independently someday. While we didn’t guess that, it will be fine. She will likely continue to qualify for PCA services even as an adult and our house by then will be fully accessible. As our other kids grow up and move out, we will have room for live-in help if we choose to hire that way.

I know it may be hard to imagine if you’ve not been given the privilege of getting to know a child like Joy. But the “burden” outsiders see is simply not there. Yes, there is more administrative paper work and more appointments. There’s no such thing as privacy for my introverted self anymore because there is another adult in the house (Joy’s PCA) much of the time. And I’ve had to accept that special ed teachers and therapists can teach her more, faster, than I can.

But in the big picture those are very small trade-offs. Joy is a joy to live with. We’ve never had as much laughter –the sheer delight kind –in our family as we’ve had since she came home. I can’t help but watch this little guy’s video  and see the same blessing waiting for another family.

Last: I’m going to take this post down and remove the comments his advocate left in the comments here when he finds a family because his story is his own and Joy’s is Joy’s. But I think there is enough value in helping his family find him to leave these up until then. It shouldn’t take long  :) .

These are greeting card verses precisely because they seem accessible. They come clothed in every-day language and play into feelings that are universal in our culture: a gift is a good thing; receiving a gift feels good; children, raised correctly, are a pleasure to their parents and bless the world.

Those sentiments, generally speaking, work when parents are given neuro-typical children. They also work pretty well with neurologically atypical kids who have been given easy, happy dispositions despite their other challenges, like my daughter Joy.

But what of the kids we’re given who don’t fit the greeting-card Bible verses?

(I’m not taking issue with the Bible, but rather the way the Bible is often interpreted.)

What about those kids whose life experiences and neurological difference make them behaviorally unpleasant? Whose basic dispositions are fearful, overwhelmed, angry? Whose behaviors are loud, socially inappropriate, scary?

Are not these children created by God? Does He not call us to advocate that they not be aborted? To give birth to them? To adopt them? To welcome them as sons, daughters, church members, friends? Does He not say, “Children are a gift from the Lord,” without qualification as to whether or not they are easy to live with?

The greeting cards remain mute.

How do we celebrate unusually challenged (and challenging) children? What do those of us who parent them say?

I am only one mom. And my answer may stump people who’ve spent a lifetime hearing that the “blessed”s in the Sermon on the Mount are the equivalent of “happy”ness.

But it helps my heart on days where I’m not feeling gifted with a good and perfect gift to remember,”I am not feeling happy right now. But I am blessed.”

Jesus did not say,”Blessed are you when your children behave admirably and reflect well on you in public.”

He did not say, “Blessed are those whose children  respect  and obey them.”

Jesus did not say, “Blessed are you when your children snuggle  instead of beating on you.”

No.

Jesus said blessed are:

• the poor in spirit;
• those who mourn;
• the meek;
• those who hunger and thirst for righteousness;
• the merciful;
• the pure in heart;
• the peacemakers;
• those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake;
• you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you. (Matthew 5:3-11)

Then Jesus summarized, “Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven.” (Matthew 5:12)

Hear that hope? These gifts we’ve been given may contain little that feels rewarding today. But if we are trusting God’s wisdom and relying on his strength, we are blessed. More, not less, than if our children were more pleasantly disposed.

My children, every single one of them, is a good and perfect gift from God. I am blessed.