dropping the bar

it all started because i cleaned out the closets. there i found years. years of memories- years of zoe and her work. and as i sorted through it- i could compare- i could measure progress- from pre-school until now- 5th grade.

i remember finding my own box of school work not long ago. it held the first things i'd done in kindergarden- a stapled book of dinosaur drawings - up to my fifth grade comparative book reports and poetry journals. i wasn't an A student growing up, but you could clearly see the progress, the maturity, the process was step wise- it was normal. each year i became better with handwriting, spelling and sentence structure. and with each year i became more invested in my school work.

when i went through zoe's work- i honestly became really discouraged. i realized that while there clearly was improvement, the slope was much flatter. she's gone from pre-school to more like 2nd grade in many things. she'd had some great examples in early years and some horrible examples last year, that didn't look that different from each other. that inconsistency stared me in the face.

and suddenly the lens shifted and it became about me, not her. what am i doing wrong? where on earth do i set the expectation level? what is she capable of if she could do the amount of writing we do now, 2 years ago? why doesn't she care?

and so i did totally the wrong thing.

i shifted into operating out of fear. that never works, and pretty much always ends badly.

i woke up today and i raised the bar. the copy work i gave her was twice as long and from a book, not a nice large fonted hand-out. the narration she gave about our reading about king henry the viii was disjointed and random and i tried to insist she try again or let me show her an example of "a good narration".

(great idea you over educated almost 40 year old with years of practice summarizing massive amounts of information into a few sentences very quickly. way to make your struggling 11 year old which a generalized information processing disorder- whose brain fights to order information correctly and then battles again with it's retrieval- understand. way to make her feel good about herself- compare her to you!)

it didn't help that today was one of those days when she woke up with her brain just not doing what she wanted it to. those days. those days when the distraction level is at "red"; the attention level is at "zero", and the sensory processing was off. you know when you sleep funny on your arm and you wake up and can't feel it at all, then slowly that painful -tingling sensation happens and then in a few minutes you can move the fingers a bit and eventually it resumes function? some days she must sleep funny on her brain.

between her off day and my upping the ante- it was the perfect storm.

half way through the day- when i began to consider poking my pencil through my eye with frustration -i stopped and listened to both of us and realized that i needed to get it together. i either needed to go smoke a pack of cigarettes, or go for a run. since i don't smoke, i went for the run.

i ran through our neighborhood on the first day that has felt like fall. it was so beautiful- but i felt sour. rigid. uptight and afraid. i couldn't figure out what i was so upset about. why i was so annoyed with her. i was angry at her lack of visually objective progress. angry at the inconsistency in her work. angry at her struggle. angry that her struggle is my struggle. but mostly so angry at me. because my anger fails her. it leaks out and spoils things. it takes what's good and makes it ugly. it is not love.

i spent the afternoon, while she was at Brain Balance, re-reading Kathryn Stewart's book "Helping a Child wtih Nonverbal Learning Disorder or Aspergers's Disorder". it's one of my go-to books when i am forgetting what life is like for zoe. when i loose site of the intensity of her challenges. when i need to be humbled. when i need to be blown away by her actual ability.

and there it was in black and white. my visually objective evidence. as i read, i began to remember where we've been. how differently the bar should be set- how the bar needs to be made of rubber or fabric, not metal or wood. it needs to be able to flex. that perhaps there shouldn't be a bar at all- in my silly little mind- perhaps it should be a beautiful mountain. one that we all climb at different speeds. one that we each take a different trail to get up. and maybe i need to remember that her pack is a lot heavier than mine. that anger weighs it down. that love lightens. and while i can't carry hers, i can walk at her pace. i can still hold her hand.