You’re supposed to be entering High School like everyone else. You swam the length of the pool at the age of two. We thought you’d be on the swim team. You set a volleyball with ease. We thought you’d play volleyball. Your smile lit up rooms. We thought we’d see you on the cover of a magazine. We saw your strength and in awe of you we thought you would accomplish so much.
We were told you couldn’t. We were told you would never speak. We were told you didn’t understand who we were. We were told your odds of survival were bleak. We were told you would and could never do…pretty much anything.
At first people rallied around us. You’d defy these odds. You would show them. But by school age everyone pretty much quit on you. They said you’d belong somewhere else not where all the other kids do. They said you’d feel much better in a smaller class and you’d “learn more”. We fought like hell for you to be in class with everyone else and you were for awhile. When we fought to have you join a typical school setting you paved the way for other kids to come too but seeing we found a loophole into their world they just changed the way. The support in the regular class opened up to more separate classes for kids like you. No one else batted an eyelid. They were all fine with telling our kid and others like you to go over there while their kids learned in the class you wanted to be in. They weren’t able to accommodate you alone because you were already labeled different.
We watched as people rallied for every community, every group and strongly advocated for their equality but we never saw them do the same for you. They were quite suffice to watch you stay over there in your own space. That’s the comfort zone. You don’t belong with them and you’re not allowed to.
We reached middle school and we were told we should stop advocating so hard for you. We should focus on being your parents and that you’d feel better learning at a slower pace. You’d feel less stress with academics and you could learn to serve coffee to teachers on Thursdays. We ignored their idea for you and fought to have you included but we were only appeased. No real effort was made. No one tried a little harder for you. In the end it was the same thing. They showed us.
Everyone else learned math and science. Everyone else made friends and grew up together. Nobody taught their children to include you. They instructed them to never say a harmful thing about other groups but not you. They don’t know what to think about you or kids like you. They never asked. You don’t look different but you are. You craved friendship and cried about being left out but you still went back each day looking for it. You grew up alone. Nobody cared.
We reached high school. We were given no other choices and now you are with one option or none. You will learn to serve the coffee to teachers after all because your miracle didn’t come the way the system needed it to. You’re again in your little class away from everyone because that’s where they think you and kids like you belong. Get there late, eat lunch early and leave early that way no one has to interact with you. In a better effort to “include” more they‘ll let you go to a few other rooms. But since you’ve been kept away for so long you’ll be ignored. No one will speak to you and no one will have any interest in actually being your friend because they’ve been told you’re different. Even their mothers who once smiled at us in encouragement now ignore. The niceties have faded and everyone’s focus is elsewhere. While in the spirit “inclusion” you were invited to an orientation. This orientation had nothing for you. You cried. Nobody cared.
While this system may tell you you’re not good enough. That you’re the square peg in the round hole it’s far from the truth. You, are leaps and bounds beyond worthy. You are a miracle. You are a walking super hero in our eyes. Your miracle did come. While you’re different and while you aren’t understood, you are beyond any doubt, incredible. You are unique. You are kind. You are loving and you’re tougher than 99% of people we know. You are a sister and a kind friend. You are courage.
You deserve more and these systems have failed you. They’ve failed us as a family. Private schools don’t have a “program for kids like you”, public schools have a one size fits all approach. While everyone else has choice after choice and endless opportunities for doors to open, you and kids like you have one choice. It doesn’t matter what your needs are you have one space to have them met. Everyone’s more comfortable with that. It might be too much for others to have to acclimate to the real world and be surrounded by different intellectual abilities. It might make learning harder for other people.
What if there was another option, What if the humanity everyone cries for was actually extended to everyone. What if our kids had a place that allowed them to be themselves and learn the way we know they can, What if there was a setting where they’d see the smile that lights up our lives instead of the timid “hard time looking at the camera smile”. What if they saw the caring, empathetic sister and friend that we know? What if they heard your real laugh that cures the deepest depression? What if they had a space to play you at Mario Kart and see you always get “top number one”? What if we could all…do better?
Until then…
mypurplepack 