My wife and I went out on a date night on March 9. I’m 67, she’s 63 and we still enjoy going out and doing things together.
We’ve been married 43 years and we’ve raised three children and are now enjoying four grandchildren.
Date night was going to a movie at our local theatre. The Unbreakable Boy was playing and it sounded very interesting. Without divulging too much information, it's based on a true story and the boy had autism and a disease called osteogenesis imperfecta. Although it is a rare disease, it does come with a much more common name – brittle bone disease.
Am I the first person who has ever wondered why they have to give every disease such a complex name when they also give it a simpler name that explains it?
On the way home, my wife asked what I thought about it. I told her I liked the idea of the story, but I found it extremely irritating to watch. The boy was a real chatterbox and spoke in a squealing-type voice. It really got on my nerves.
More of that shortly.
While pregnant with our third child, my wife underwent a series of tests that indicated there was a good chance that our baby would have Down syndrome. We weren’t willing to undergo the risks of an amniocentesis, so we went into the delivery room fully prepared to welcome a child with special needs.
We were told to watch for three things – callouses on the thumbs, a perpetual smile and baby fingers and toes that pointed outwards.
When our daughter arrived, she showed all three traits. But after some testing, it was determined that she was not a down syndrome baby.
We thought about that quite a bit over the next several weeks, wondering what life would have been like had we become parents of a child with special needs.
Even without any special needs, we knew from experience that parenting was extremely difficult, as any of you with children already know. Without getting into specifics or details, we had our share of problems to deal with as well as many a heartache.
We have absolutely no regrets in having the children. In fact, we wish we could have had more. The raising of a family has been a highlight of our lives, even though there were many unwanted bumps along the way.
But nothing compared to the additional demands of raising a child who has extra needs.
Now, back to the movie.
The part of the movie that really irritated me was the part that I really needed to hear. That high-pitched, constantly-chattering child drove his parents, especially his father, up the wall. And further, without spoiling the movie for those of you who plan to see it, the man turned to drinking to find an escape from the demands of the special needs, which led to losing a job, which led to financial stress, which led to a broken marriage.
Again, the source of irritation for me was exactly what I needed to be reminded of. There are people all around me (and you) whose lives are filled with stress because of the demands of children with additional needs, demands that a lot of us have a hard time relating to.
In the few days that followed, I came to realize that my response of irritation was wrong. I should have seen what the larger picture of the movie was all about – the reminder to empathize and sympathize with the difficulty that comes with parenting, especially when the children have needs that demand greater attention.
