Friday, April 27, 2012

REFLECTIONS AND REASONS.

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of our trip to Israel! WOW! What a year. On reflection, if you want true honesty, what a crap year (for me that is). I guess you could say as a mother, wife, daughter, sister and friend I would personally say I have failed in may ways this year! I guess may people would argue that I was wrong! The beauty of opinion. Everyone has a different one.

I have really struggled in  feeling like I have failed Noam is so many ways.... There are so many things that I have promised myself I would do for him. I simply do not have the time to do them. Being a mother of three young children I have spent the last few months realising that in order for Noam to be successful our family needs to be successful.

It is true that everything we learnt in Israel was life changing. I gained a wealth of knowledge and understanding into the mind of my son. I came home understanding to some degree how to break down his frustrations and make the world a clearer place for him to explore develop and succeed in... Unfortunately all this doesn't give me a 'get out of jail' card. the therapy is ongoing the struggles and challenges evolve as fast as i can type...

Noam has grown so much in the past year.... His language had developed thanks to an amazing speech therapist. His concentration, compliance and general wellbeing has reached levels we never knew possible thanks to his fabulous OT and various natural therapists. But most of all thanks to Noam.

School has been a whirlwind of emotions. I never realised how hard the mainstream road would be. As I often walk through the school to pick up Noam I still feel a small sense of heart ace that comes with having a child with special needs in a mainstream school. But as I enter the class room to be shown his work book where Noam begins to read to me. Yes, READ TO ME! I forget the heart ace and am blow over with pride.

I wish the world would see Noam the way I did. Sometimes I feel like I underestimate him, judge him and loose faith in him. If I am being honest with myself I think these feelings stem from other peoples perceptions, ones which horrifically influence me for a flicker of a moment. We all have a lot to learn.

Someone asked me this week why I chose to put Noam in a mainstream school. Someone once said to me ' why a mainstream school? We have such a hard time helping our children with acceptance and belonging in an environment where they are more than often NOT. Why don't you just put him in a special school where he doesn't feel different'?'


This is the look I get on his face EVERY DAY when I pick him up from mainstream school. He is  slowly making friends (he has two buddies) He is developing speech rapidly. He is learning to read and write. He may be doing things a little slower than others, some things a little faster than others. He is doing them and he is HAPPY!