I have been blessed by God with four incredible children. Now, I know everyone thinks their children are incredible, and everyone is right about that. But objectively speaking, my kids kick butt.
I have also been extra blessed by God because two of my four children fall into the category we now refer to as "Special Needs." My oldest kid was born with cerebral palsy. A "CP kid" we all used to say when we would meet with other parents in the lobby of various occupational and physical therapy offices.
My youngest kid is on the autism spectrum. He is now 14 and still "non-speaking," as we say, but that does not keep him from communicating. I love to marinate in the irony of God blessing a talk radio host whose life revolves around communicating to millions of people who only have the sound of my voice to conjure images in their mind's eye and react to with a child who (so far) uses every means except his voice to interact with the world.
Over the past 21 years of my oldest's life and the 14 years of my youngest's, I've experienced so much, learned so much, failed at so much, and triumphed over so much as a dad of these two miracles that I've finally reached the point where I want to share as much as I can with other parents... specifically, dads.
You see, as a man who has experienced the reality of parenting two children that do not fit into the exact mold discussed and dissected in so many parenting books that are available to all of us from the moment that little "plus" sign shows up on the test stick, I have realized that although there are volumes of books geared toward moms of special needs kids, there are very few that specifically speak to the father's experience.
And, let's face it, we dads are different. We approach things differently. We have different questions. We have different concerns. We have different stresses. We have different priorities. Not better, not worse... but different.
I'll be spending some of my precious column space here at Townhall to share some of these experiences and lessons so I might touch some other parents who could very well be in the same situation I've been in.
I'll be honest, as I outlined the first few columns I planned to write on this subject, most of them revolved around my failures and missteps and the lessons I've learned.
Because of that, I've decided to call this series of columns: Confessions of a Special Needs Dad.
My two oldest (my daughters) are 21 and 19. The transition to parenting adult children has been a fascinating and frustrating phenomenon. At the same time, I think for my kids to become adults and find their way in a parent/child relationship has been equally challenging. For all involved, there have been new discoveries and moments of difficult transition.
My oldest is now in her third year at UCLA in their famous School of Theatre, Film, and Television. Given my roots in the Broadway theatre business, I'm incredibly proud of her career choice, and she's already more capable and knowledgeable about stage management (her career path) than I could have ever imagined. She's also studying and is a campus leader in the field of disability rights and accessibility.
It's in this latter field of study that I just learned something about how I parented her.
My kid's CP manifests itself in very limited use of her right hand and acute muscle tone in her right calf, causing her to limp. When she was a toddler, she learned to walk right on time because she was just so determined to get from point A to point B that she forced herself to adapt and figure it out.
I remember a time when she was approaching two years old. We hadn't moved her to a toddler bed because we figured her lack of dexterity and strength in her right hand would prevent her from climbing out of the crib, so I figured why not keep her in there until she outgrows it, right?
There I was sitting downstairs watching television after putting her to bed, and I heard an ear-crashing THUMP from her bedroom right above me.
"She's tried to climb out of her crib, and she's crashed to the floor!" I thought while I held my breath, waiting to hear the screams of pain. It was eerily silent.
"Oh, God," I thought. "She's cracked her head open, and she's unconscious in a pool of blood up there." Because dads, like our female counterparts, think the worst tragedies have befallen our kids, we just imagine them a lot more gory and horrific.
I lept up the stairs three steps-per-stride and burst through the door.
There she was. Smiling, playing with her toys.
The "thump" was my daughter making a solid landing on her feet while climbing out of her bed to get what she wanted. The limited use of her hand had not prevented her from climbing out of the crib, and it hadn't "handicapped" her in such a way that her attempt to do what every toddler does at some point in their life resulted in a tragic accident.
My kid had been motivated to get something...to achieve something. And that motivation compelled her to adapt, figure out what her body could do, figure out the limitations she had, and then she figured it out.
She knew better than anyone what she could and couldn't do with her right hand. She knew her limitations. Even more important: She knew her capabilities.
The lesson I learned that day was that if she tried hard enough and put her mind to it, there was nothing she couldn't do. And from that point forward, I raised her with that spirit.
"You may have to work harder than everyone else, but if you want it bad enough, you can do anything you want," I would say when she was so young she couldn't possibly remember today.
Sounds inspirational, right? Too bad it was totally misguided.
The fact is, my kid can do anything, but she can't do everything. And by suggesting all it took was hard work to do "anything anyone else can do," it gave the impression that I didn't accept who she was for all the things she might not be able to do. It left the impression that I wanted to hide the beautiful, incredible uniqueness she was born with.
I didn't feel that way. The thought never even crossed my mind, but that's the impression I left. And I am so sorry.
My daughter never actually told me about this, but I came to this realization over a lot of soul searching after reading a recent paper she wrote for college.
She told the story of how, as a teenager, she was producing a play in Los Angeles. She raised the money, she rented a theatre, and her partners (also high school kids) would direct and act while she would serve as production stage manager.
When they went into production, she discovered that the space for the stage manager to call and run the show was in a tech loft that was only accessible via a ladder. Here she was facing her senior-year self-produced professional production, and she was now not able to call the show she had been looking forward to managing for months because the theatre was inaccessible to her as a theatre professional and stage manager with limited use of her hand and leg.
If you are raising a child with a physical disability, it's important to keep this in mind.
Yes, she can do anything, but she can't do everything. And it invokes despair when one realizes she could do much more of the "everything" she'd like to do if only the rest of the world just paused to consider that the world is more challenging than it needs to be for way too many of our brothers and sisters.
We should keep that in mind more than we do. We should try to keep that in mind always.
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