Parenting your child with special needs will strengthen your patience;

especially when they enter their Era of Independence!

I’ve talked about Bethie having “glitches” in her thinking- getting stuck in repetitive thought and unable to move past it.  I’ve shared how she has her balking, mulish moments where I’m trying to figure out how to get her to see the wisdom and safety of moving forward.  I don’t even know what to call this new “Era of Independence” that we have seemingly entered into overnight!  Independence is a good thing- a wonderful, natural progression of things, right?  But what if their independent streak is out of control?

What if I’ve lost my “magic mommy powers of Bethany influence” and her indepedence is bigger than me? 

 Pray for me! LOL

The next stories are true and factual! However, due to the length of content- this post is a two parter…

Let me share just a few epic moments.  When I was sick, Beth decided she was going to move.  Don’t worry, she took up residence in our sun-room on the west side of our home, and promptly set up “housekeeping”.  It was cute. Then Saturday came. I went to help her choose her clothes church the next day and realized there were NO clothes in her closet or drawers.  “Bethany?  Where are all your clothes?  Are they in the dirty laundry?”  Grinning from ear to ear, she proudly exclaimed, “No, Mom.  Remember- I moved! They’re all at my house.”  Following her out to the sunporch, the contents of her closet were stuffed into pillow cases, set neatly in a corner. “See.  I got everything I need at my house. I’m letting Finley live here too, when she’s here. You can come visit us any time, Mom.”

Harmless baby steps toward independence.  Kinda funny and I’m pretty cool, so I laughed.

~ ~ ~

The next day, Jeff asked her if she wanted to go with him to Veritas because he was going to be the speaker for chapel Friday morning.  She responded, “Hmmm Dad, I don’t know.  I need to check my calendar. I pretty busy.”

WHAT?

  What calendar?

Busy with what?

She’s moved and settled in to her new house, so that can’t be it. 🙂

~ ~ ~

Home Schooling – math- Have I mentioned that I’ve been “out of it” for a month?  That means Bethany has been “out of it” for a month.  Before break, she had mastered counting by 5’s!  Yay…re-entry time is here and it’s been rough! 🙂  Again, I feel like I need to repeat that if Beth had a typical working brain, I would handle it differently.  But my mission is to get the correct information to stick and for Beth to understand!  So I repeat information in various ways, pray for patience, repeat and rejoice- a lot!

OK- I handed her play $10.00 bills to count! Great job- she counted different amounts of 10.00’s correctly.  Then we moved on to $5.00 bills.  I gave her 3.

She counted, “Five—-ten—twenty.”

“No, remember, it’s five—-ten—-FIFTEEN.”

She looked at me,  “Nooooo, mom you forgot. It’s five—-ten—–twenty.” 

“No Beth, let me show you.” 

Insulted, she answered “Mom, I know how to count.” 

Frustrated, I thought- no- you don’t- but I didn’t say it 🙂

Would you believe our “lesson” went on for 15 minutes! Until Josh came in.

Josh said, “Look Beth!  He laid down the 5.0o’s one at a time. “Five- ten- fifteen.”

Beth said, “Oh, thanks Josh. Mommy was confused. Five- ten- fifteen!”

There is more to come- believe me 🙂

 to be continued….. 

 Click on this link to continue the Saga of “in”Dependence Part 2