The day I became a mother for the first time was a very emotional time for me. She arrived into our lives at just 32 weeks gestation after a roller coaster of a pregnancy. I was finally able to see my little girl after several hours and I was scared to death at what I saw in the NICU. She had so many machines and wires hooked up to her that I was too scared to even touch her. I didn't know whether to be happy she was alive or cry because I didn't know if she would live. I wasn't told too much about her health but was reassured by the nurse that she was in good hands. I was then wheeled to my room where I cried myself to sleep from exhaustion.
Our daughter's first years were plagued with mild medical issues that left me somewhat scratching my head. Why was she plagued with ear infections, one after another after another? Why at three did she only have a 5 word vocabulary? Why did I have to yell at her to get her attention? Why when she finally did start to talk, could no one but her father and I understand her? I had to find out the answers to these questions and the questions that came from the answers we got.
We finally got some answers and began on what we didn't know at the time, a very long journey. Test after test, specialist after specialist brought us some answers about her speak and language. Our daughters sinus's drained into her ears and thus why the almost constant ear infections. Due to the frequent ear infections, our daughter couldn't properly understand us and this led to the delay in her language. We were able to get some early intervention to help our daughter learn to talk so that others could understand her.
By the time she was in kindergarten I started noticing more things that didn't seem to add up. Our daughter couldn't seem to run without falling. I just figured she inherited my two left feet and didn't get too concerned about it. Soon I noticed more and more things that she could not do. She had difficulty riding a bike and she looked so awkward trying to skip down the road. When I questioned this to the doctor I was told that there was nothing wrong with her and not to worry about it, she was just not a "graceful" kid.
My concern didn't end there. Call it mothers intuition or first time mom worries, I knew something was up with her even at the age of 5. Even with this in the back of my head, I refused to allow this to hinder her enjoying being a kid. I continued to read to her and have her repeat what I said. I continued to work with her in developing her gross motor skills that she lacked in. It was a never ending "game" for her, always a new project to do or a new activity to finish. I signed her up for activities that dealt with gross motor function like Tee Ball until she told me she didn't want to play it anymore.
I realized that her delays went further then her speech, ears and gross motor function when her Kindergarden teacher told me that she couldn't go onto first grade. She went on to explain that she knew enough to pass Kindergarden but would not be able to succeed in first grade and that they recommended she go into a transitional first grade classroom. This was the begining of her special educational needs for years to come.
Every new school year brought more and more challenges that we faced together. Learning to read, learning to write, learning basic math skills and so on were just some of the challenges she faced. These were so hard for her to grasp that she began to hate school. At one point in her young life that we had to carry her, kicking and screaming, into the school and place her in a chair in the office. We got her there and when she was calmed down enough to go to class, she was dismissed to her classroom.
It wasn't until she was in the 6th grade and her inabilities to do some things, did the school finally do a battery of tests to determine if she had a learning disability and placed a 504 plan until an IEP could be developed and implemented. It was found, through the evaluations, that my daughter indead had several learning disabilities around reading, short term memory loss, spacial functioning, speech/articulation, slow processing speed, multi-step problems, word reversal and test anxiety.
Once an IEP was established and implemented, her whole demeaner regarding school turned 180 degree's. She is now in Highschool and accually enjoys and looks forward to school. She is in some SPED classrooms as well as mainstream classrooms. With the right supports in place, she has grown in ways I can not even put to words. At 18, she can finally, 90% of the time, tell what time it is. Her reading level is still at an elementary grade level and her math level is still in the middle school level but she has worked so hard to acheive mostly A's and B's for the last two years.
The learning disabilities don't end there but she is making it step by step. Our next hurdle is to work on money, counting it, making change as well as estimating how much to give a cashier. She will always struggle with things in her life but I pray that we have given her enough instruction that it woun't be so difficult for her. She is a stubborn young lady who will achieve everything she puts her mind to and not just give up because something is hard but to keep pushing on.
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