The waiting room at the occupational therapist is surprisingly low-key, in terms of the emotional energy. The parents don’t chat with each other as much as you’d expect. Some of them have other kids to watch; some of them are catching up on work; some just want the forty minutes or hour of peace.
But we all know why we’re here. We’ve all been down a path that starts with wondering if something your child does, or doesn’t do, is just a little personality quirk, or a sign of More. We moved on, probably, to other people noticing things about the child, to someone suggesting or even insisting that we get the kid “evaluated.” And then there was the either a sad day when your kid got a really big label, or maybe the verdict was less clear: a series of “well, it could be this,” “there are indications of X,” “s/he seems to have an issue with Y,” “you should probably consider Z,” “let’s try ABC and see if it helps…”
These parents are learning the same hard lessons you are about which therapy does what, public v. private school, what’s a disability and what’s not, accommodations, 504 plans, IEP’s, advocacy. They, too, know the stress of dealing with tantrums and all stripes of impulsive, antisocial and age-inappropriate behavior. You know they worry, just like you, about their “different” child making friends, getting through school, and navigating adult life. How, you wonder, will this kid ever make it through college if she can’t write more than a simple paragraph? How, that dad wonders, will my child ever hold down a job when he can’t make eye contact and screams when he’s frustrated?
But it’s not as depressing as all that. Here, at least, people get it. You don’t have to explain the weird thing your toddler is doing in the corner. And the therapists are gurus, counselors, guides… angels, really. Finally, there’s another adult who not only can understand what you’re dealing with, she’s in a position to offer those rare gems: useful opinions about your particular child! You can ask all those questions that occur to you in the middle of the night, you can get a sense of how your kid compares to others, you can have a plan. You don't have to worry about boring the therapist, or annoying her with your own brand of crazy, obsessive worry, like you might with a friend or your kid's teacher. The therapist gives you a break: a time or two each week when someone else takes on the burden of dealing with the Big Furry Problem you live with. We hang on their words, when they emerge with our kids: “He had a good day today! We worked on X,Y, Z. He told me about ABC, and we talked about how important it is to try hard at DEF, and this week he’s going to work on doing J.“ We can go home, knowing we’re Doing Something, having a plan to attack, or tame, or at least co-exist with the Big Furry Problem.
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I’ve been stewing over that bit for weeks, and it’s still not meeting my exacting Blog Standards, but I’m ready to move on. As for the household update:
School is out: we had the groundbreaking for the new school playground/soccer field/etc. and the class parties and the “winter songs” programs and general PTO meetings. The Girl Scout campout went well; Rod and Ruby are tired but everyone seems to have had a good time and somehow they made it down the freeway and back with the minvan-dwarfing U-Haul of gear. Carl had a sleepover with a friend one night, leaving me to go to a party by myself for the first time in probably a decade. The next day we played ball and read books and he resisted my efforts to get him to nap, and we went to another party that night, ‘tis the season and all. Yesterday, there was a big impromptu pack of kids at my house. Supposedly they were here to make Christmas cookies, but the kids mostly played and fought with each other while the organizing mom and I did some baking….not really the satisfying parent/child bonding activity she’d envisioned, and honestly, the cookies weren’t so hot.
I still don’t have a grip on Christmas/Rod’s birthday/New Year’s. Amazon Prime is my only friend at this stage, and Rod is trying to gently action on various fronts. Santa is very uninspired this year and I hope my little brats aren’t too disappointed. I need to figure out what to take to a Christmas Eve party and then what to eat on Christmas Day, and I need to get an invitation out for the New Year’s Eve party we’re having (no better way to celebrate your least favorite holiday than with a big party at your house!). To top things off, I’m keeping up a proud pre-Christmas tradition by contracting a Huge, Rotten, Sleep-Impeding Cold complete with sinus pressure, drippy nose and hacking cough, which makes me look and sound lovely and I am undoubtedly passing it along to everyone else in the house and the neighborhood, so I’ll get to deal with it again, even after I recover.
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