Five Things I've Learned

Often, individual parents or families have unique experiences that teach them things they may not have realized before. For the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about what my son’s special needs taught me about parenting, and I want to share a few of those in hopes that they will help or encourage other parents or pre-parents in some way. I started to realize these five things when Elijah was diagnosed with developmental delays at the age of 3, and even though the delays are now in our past, these lessons I learned have become part of the foundation of what I do as a parent. Again, I hope that my personal reflections will be able to help or encourage someone else.

1. Listen to your heart and be confident. I felt in my heart that something wasn’t quite right with Elijah, especially with his language development, but for a long time my concerns were shrugged off by others as “just a stage.” But if you feel strongly that something just isn’t right with your child, then you’re probably correct. Parents tend to have a “gut feeling” about these things. Also, I wasn’t very confident in my parenting decisions. I worked hard to please the people around me and do what they thought was best, which led to a lot of inconsistency and confusion. If you feel in your heart that something is just not working for your family, listen to your heart, even if everyone else around you is doing things differently. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to raising children; know your child, know yourself, and do what is most beneficial to everyone involved. Do it confidently—this is your family, and your child. Make your decisions purposefully, and believe in yourself.

2. Slow down. I had been in college full-time from the time Elijah was three weeks old; I graduated about a month after his diagnosis. My education is something that is valuable to me and I don’t regret having it—but I do wish I had slowed down a bit and spent more time just focusing on him. Since graduating two and a half years ago, I have intentionally slowed down; for me, slowing down meant becoming a full-time mom. I have gotten to know and understand Elijah in a way that I didn’t before, I have been able to work with him one-on-one, and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to be at home with him. I do have other interests, of course, and I absolutely plan to work on fulfilling some of my other goals one day—but right now, my job is to raise my children. And before I get comments telling me that not everyone can be or wants to be a full-time parent—this is what slowing down looked like for me. It may not be what slowing down looks like for you. Refer to the paragraph above about following your heart. ;)

3. Recognize and understand your child’s developmental abilities. I promise this will save you lots of frustration! In our case, the developmental delays meant that, for a time, I could not expect “age appropriate” behavior from Elijah; chronologically he was 3, but developmentally he was around 1. I have carried that awareness of developmentally appropriate behavior with me ever since, and it has helped me become aware of what behaviors (and misbehaviors!) are normal at any given age/stage. If you know that children at a certain chronological and/or developmental age behave in certain ways, and why, you will better know what can be reasonably expected of them. If you have a two year old, become familiar with how two year olds generally behave, and don’t be surprised when yours does the same thing. Same with three year olds, four year olds, and so on. When you know what to expect and why, you are equipped to respond much more calmly and firmly than you would be if you just assumed your child was being a brat. :-P

4. Punishment doesn’t necessarily accomplish what you intend to accomplish. Before I knew about the extent of Elijah’s delays, I expected him to act in ways that he was not even developmentally ready for, and I would get frustrated and punish. This is one of my biggest regrets in my parenting journey—that it took a special needs diagnosis for me to realize that punishing him was just frustrating me and him more and not doing a thing to actually remedy the situation. I realized that disciplining by teaching worked so much better (since disciplining means teaching anyway, that makes sense!). When I chose to calmly model and teach, I saw him start to behave in the ways I was teaching him, our relationship improved, and our frustration levels dropped. I’ll say it again—punishment doesn’t teach appropriate behavior; teaching it does. Smacking, spanking, yelling, time-outs, verbally shaming, emotionally manipulating—none of those things actively teach the appropriate behavior. In a way, this goes hand-in-hand with #3; knowing what your child is developmentally capable of at a given age shapes the things you expect of them and the ways that you teach them.

5. Know your child. Know his or her strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, interests and talents, personality and temperament. Knowing these things about Elijah has been huge for us; for example, I have been able to focus on what he enjoys and does well in order to teach him new skills, and I better know what to expect of him in a given situation based on his God-given personality and temperament. I can parent him as an individual based on my understanding of him as a person. Our next child may be totally different; I will get to know him, too, and parent him as an individual as well.

These are things that have helped me tremendously, and I hope by sharing them they will help someone else, too. :)