Super Powers

Something amazing happens when you discover something about your child that is different from your experience of the world. It was bound to happen, after all, their experience can’t be the same as yours because…internet and iPhones and GMOs and the 24hr connectivity of informational input (I digress for now because there’s a whole other post about that one…)

The point is that when you find out that there is something different about your kid, all the ways in which you know how to guide them through this maze of life shift. You begin to examine everything and if that difference is one that isn’t easily accommodated by the world around you, its go time and you have to correct course oftentimes through uncharted waters. I’ve learned a lot about myself in the process and this basically explains the last 10 years of my life. While its been a roller coaster, I wouldn’t change a thing. 

By examining the world around us through the eyes of our children we discover so much. Take dyslexia. About a year ago it was unceremoniously pointed out to me that my oldest child is dyslexic. This was not a surprise to us, we just never named it for her before so now we refer to it as her Magic 3D Super Power. This super power is awesome when doing jigsaw puzzles (something she’s always excelled at) or working out the mechanics of cam shaft automation (its pretty amazing to watch). She thinks of things in ways I can’t even imagine. One thing that she works really hard at but twists her brain in knots? Reading your standard young adult novel. Between the weird fonts (italics suck), tightly packed type and the ridiculousness that is the English language she struggles. Its a pure, beautiful struggle to do something that is expected of her but that works against her natural order. You may say she’s swimming upstream, but I’ll always know that she can fly.

Do you have anything like that in your life? Geometry? Promptness? Patience?