Welcome to Holland: ANOTHER UPDATE

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability- to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this...

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip- to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills... and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things... about Holland.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

ANOTHER UPDATE

Well, that wasn’t helpful at all! Just more empty promises that I know they can’t possibly promise at this point! Pretty much just a replica of the first meeting. FRUSTRATED! I feel like they are listening and nodding their heads and not really hearing us. On to the next thing… a meeting with all the parents to find out what everyone is feeling and thinking.

Again, I walked away thinking, “Don’t tell me you care about my child when you don’t even know who he is!” They knew nothing about Mitch nor have they spent any time with him. I know they have a lot of students with disabilities in the district but is it too much to ask that the Director of Special Education and the Assistant Director get out there and personally meet all of these kids? They would have a better understanding of their needs if they would.

We honestly feel like we have found something so wonderful and so exciting that Mitch LOVES and now it is being ripped out from under our feet. We feel so helpless in this situation. It doesn’t help that my whole family has the flu right now… my mood might brighten up when we all feel better. I’ll cross my fingers.