A Special Heart

I truly believe that kids with special needs need special parents with a special heart in order to succeed. When I say succeed I am NOT speaking to becoming doctors or lawyers, or the entrepreneur that makes six figures while sitting on a beach on Tokyo. I just mean a successful life in general. You know...the kind where you work for a living, support your family, give back to the community, and have a loving family.

That's just my definition of success at the moment. It may be different tomorrow. It may be different in an hour. Please do not take offense if you are not supporting your family right now, or if you cannot volunteer of yourself. Success may be a very different picture for you.

I work very hard to help keep my special boys on task. Very hard. So hard in fact that there are days where I think it may very well be the death of me. I have those days where I just want to lie down, and when I say lie down...I mean lie down, and never get back up.

Sometimes I feel like I am in this alone. My child's only advocate. That's a lot of strain a mommas heart. Especially a momma with 2 special boys and 4 children all together.

No matter how organized my brain is once these guys walk out from under my wings...they are in the drivers seat. They are in control. They have the power to undo all of the planning and organizing I so painstakingly did to ensure they were set up for success. One of them usually does just that.

You may be wondering what has sent me on such a tangent. It's really the smallest of things. It's really MY issue. Today is team pictures day. I made sure to pay for the photos online so that my son would not have a check or cash to keep track of. I placed his uniform in a gallon Ziploc baggie WITH the order form and confirmation number of payment to ensure that the uniform didn't get wet or stained, and that the order form wouldn't get lost. I asked him to place it in his backpack. I made sure to watch that he actually DID place it in his backpack AND that the order form and both uniform pieces were inside it.

I get this team picture every year. I want to have these in his scrapbook of memories for when he gets older. Every year he misplaces or forgets the form. Every year it is a battle to track down the company and arrange to get copies of the pics. You may think I should just not get the pic and let that be his lesson. That wouldn't do anything to solve this problem. It is ME who wants the picture. He could probably care less.

As you may now have guessed he has somehow lost that order form envelope. It's gone. He has no idea where it went. It is probably in the locker room or the team bus...or floating around at the school where they hosted last nights 5k. Who knows.

I had planned for this to happen. I kept the parent side of the order form. I wrote down the confirmation number. I circled the package I had ordered. I put his name on the paper. HOPEFULLY he doesn't lose that one. I forgot to make a copy.

I know it may seem like the smallest of things...but it is the little things that pile up around here. Losing homework every.single.day. Losing order forms. Permission slips. Uniforms. Gym clothes. Sweat pants. SHOES!!! He lost 2.5 pairs of shoes in the first month of school.

I don't know that this is anything more than a vent. My head aches. My heart hurts. I'm tired, and weary, and bruised to the bone...and now that he is off to school I have another very special boy to wake up and start all over again. Thankfully this one has an organized brain like mine...he's special in a very different way. Bring on the loud, hyper, and wild.

Have a great day. Hug someone today. They may really need it!