10 years ago my son and I met for the very first time in a government office in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. It was hard to hold him. I had a big winter coat and he was in 4 layers of clothes with the outer most layer being a thick snow suit. And as I would come to learn later, at 27-months he didn't know how to hold on. He was concerned but didn't cry when he was handed to me. He loved the musical glow worm I had brought and walking around the office lobby was lots of fun. While he didn't cry, he also didn't talk. I wasn't concerned at all, because after all it had to be scary to have lived your entire life in an orphanage and then to be passed off to a strange white woman. He would always smile and look when I called him "BaoBao" which is what he had been called. He loved to eat and would eat until he looked pregnant. He also loved his bath and having water poured over his head.
10 years ago I didn't know
- My son had autism spectrum disorder, sensory processing disorder, and a language disorder
- That he had a killer smile and a contagious laugh
- All of the wonderful people I would meet in person and on line that would be there to help with the journey
- There was something call hipotherapy where kids get to have OT, PT or speech therapy while riding a horse
- How his very first daycare teachers and therapists would check up on each other to make sure he was being treated right
- How wonderful and caring the bus drivers are that drive the sped buses
- That you talk deficits at evaluation meetings and building on strengths at IEP meetings
- The wonderful organizations there to help
- That he would need 10 (and counting) sets of PE tubes
- That he would use an iPad to talk to me on the phone
And in the words of the King of Siam in The King and I , "etcetera, etcetera, etcetera". (Can't you just visualize Yul Brynner saying that?!)
Makes me look forward to the next 10 years.
