The emotional bank account concept holds that we run unconscious tallies of “deposits” and “withdrawals” with every human-to-human interaction. Keeping your bank accounts balanced – financial and emotional – is a part of being an adult. But what about when that socially awkward person is your special needs child? Who balances the emotional bank account then?
Other moms would talk about the hours-long, sleep-of-the-dead naps their children took, or how by three months of age they were putting their kids down to sleep at 8 p.m. and not hearing a peep from them till dawn. I wanted to scream. Or throw something. Or both, except I was too tired. Instead I’d chew my lip and turn away, crying, wondering how I was screwing up so badly at mothering that none of us had gotten a decent night’s sleep in years.
Last month we got a letter from our school district. Standardized test scores were in, and kiddo hadn’t achieved proficiency in math. Again. This time there are consequences. Come September, kiddo will be repeating algebra.
A year ago, in the office of kiddo’s newly assigned high school counselor, I had the unhappy task of trying to explain why I thought my child should repeat pre-algebra, despite having passed it.
Imagine that phone call, in which you as parent have to tell your child’s brand-new counselor they’re three years behind the curve.
Now imagine guiding that same kiddo through Of Mice and Men, wherein the intellectually disabled character, prone to violent outbursts, is put out of his misery with a bullet in the back of his head, fired by his guardian. Or To Kill a Mockingbird, featuring the “not right” Boo Radley spending his adult years under family-imposed house arrest. Next up, Romeo and Juliet, the story of obsessive teenage lovers kept apart, wherein one character decides faking suicide and running away from home are her best options, and the other character kills himself in despair.
Is this canon really the best we can do? If the literary characters with mental health issues students read about are always marked for confinement or death, then we’re not moving the ball on diversity, acceptance, or even opening pathways to conversation.
Back in his preschool days, my son was diagnosed with a vision issue that got him a disability label, plus some behavioral issues adding to it. But there is a vast difference between qualifying for services, and receiving services. In Pennsylvania, where special needs care for the under-18 set is administered on a county-by-county basis, there is also a vast difference in care by ZIP code grouping.
“It’s a process, not an event.” I heard this about a number of things in my kiddo’s toddler life – weaning, teething, potty training. Now I’m midway through another process with kiddo – switching schools for a second time.