Gold Star

My son has special needs, and sometimes I have a hard time dealing with that. We didn't request to adopt a child with special needs...in fact, we sort of requested the opposite, but God knew that our son and my husband and I needed to be together, so he pulled his own "paperwork strings," and I am now the mother of the most perfect child in the world, and he just happens to have some special needs.

However, the fallout from this "twist of fate" is that I was not able to prepare intellectually or emotionally to be the mother of a child with special needs. Sometimes I have to stop myself from justifying my son's limitations to strangers, or justify my own limitations as a mother. That's not fair to anyway. Little Bug is Little Bug and I am his mother. We are no one else.

I worry that I don't give Little Bug or Appa and I enough credit. Sure, I toot our horns when something big happens milestone wise, but I am always consciously doing it, like we have something to prove.

Tonight we had dinner with some friends who know our family's whole story, and I waxed poetic about Little Bug's latest accomplishments, namely holding a phone up to his ear to pretend to talk on it and picking a star out of a box on command. To most these would be unremarkable for a 20-month-old, but to me, they are huge accomplishments for my little guy. What struck me later was the fact that there was nothing running through my head at that moment other than excitement for my little boy and a huge amount of pride....no tempering with what he still working on or where is limitations are and how they can be overcome. I wasn't talking about these accomplishments as part of a bigger goal, rather I was just celebrating Little Bug for who he is, right now, in this moment.

It's not acceptance that I am still looking for regarding Little Bug's needs, but it is just a comfort level. I'm slowly getting to the point where his needs don't frame the way I think of him. That's a very good thing.

Gold Star for Everyday Mama!