It has been almost ten years since we first saw Xanthe's picture, and learned a little bit about her. I stared at those referral pictures for hours, wondering who was behind that solemn face and under all those clothes. Ten years later, in some ways, Xanthe is still as much of a mystery as the first day we saw her face. If Xanthe processes things slowly, Scott and I learn at an even slower pace, because we're still trying to piece together the Xanthe puzzle, figuring out the best ways for her to learn, and the best ways to teach her.
With learning disabilities, it's always a relief to put a label on the problem, but even the label is by no means a guarantee of a solution, or even a clear path. Xanthe has auditory processing disorder. Sounds go in her ear, then they sometimes get lost on their way to the part of her brain that makes sense of them, or they get sorted out very slowly. That means that if I say, "Xanthe, get your backpack," I have to wait as long as ten seconds for her to react. Sadly, it took me forever to figure this out, leading to a lot of frustration on both ends. Something like "Get your backpack and get in the car" is sometimes insurmountable. For Xanthe, there's the processing of the complicated request, then all the possible variables, like some of the kids are still in the house, which seat will I sit in, will I have to get in the back, where are we going, etc.
But then! Sometimes Xanthe is perfectly capable of all of this! If I were to draw a graph of her learning disabilities, there would be no straight lines. It wouldn't look like "here's the 4th grade, and here's Xanthe, just a little bit below, both lines angling upwards as the kids make progress." It would look like Swiss cheese. Here's a hole. Oh wait, that hole is gone. Here's another hole. Here's a new hole. Here's a hole we hadn't noticed before. It's impossible to quantify and organize exactly what is going on. It's like her brain will be humming along just fine and then a switch will cause a momentary blackout. How can you prepare for that? You don't know when the power's going to go off.
The other day in the car, I said to Xanthe, "If you could go anywhere, where would you go?"
She immediately said, "China. Because I would want to meet my birth family and see what it's like there and I've always wondered about that." I've been waiting years for this kind of understanding to dawn so we can have the hard conversations!
I started to say, "I would love to do that with you. It would be so great to..."
Xanthe interjected, not listening to me, "Or New York. Because I've never been there, and they have all this pizza."
Ok then. My biggest challenge with Xanthe is resisting the desire for her to be different, better, more capable of progress. It's human nature to want to find solutions and fix problems, and it's been very difficult to accept that I can't, even though I'm Xanthe's mother, "fix" her brain. That understanding comes with more than a little guilt. Unlike our biological children, Xanthe could have ended up with a different set of parents, and those parents could have done better. Although I know Xanthe is truly ours, I have felt anger that she didn't get parents that could do better. Adoption brings out very, very complex emotions that have nothing to do with what you know intellectually, on top of all the good old parenting emotions of guilt and inadequacy.
It's all well and good to say, "all you can do is love them," or "you're doing a great job," but it's blindingly frustrating to watch your child struggle, and it's twice as frustrating not to be able to communicate to her what the problem is, both because I don't fully understand it, and because she certainly doesn't. I'm tired of "working" on things every minute. The letter R, saying thank you, wiping your mouth, not tripping over things, remembering what we do with our coat, the G Major scale for 4 years...
Shouldn't all this work yield some results? Shouldn't Xanthe's brain be able to hold onto some of these skills, and never let them go? She deserves some progress! She deserves some dawning, some understanding, some payoff for all her uphill struggle. What I have to come to terms with is that progress will be slow, and it won't be steady. I should have realized this years ago, instead of continually thinking I would find the magic bullet that would make Xanthe's life perfect. If I'm going through the five stages of grief over Xanthe's learning disabilities, I'm still on "anger." It took me this long to get through "denial." Talk about a slow learner!
The silver lining of all of this is that Xanthe has a wonderful attitude. She is happy. She is sweet and loving. She loves school. And yes, she IS making progress. Two steps forward and one step back, so as usual, Xanthe is taking twice as many steps as everyone else, but she is going to make it. The question is, am I?!? ;)
1 comment:
I can't click "I get it" nearly enough times on this post. I SOOOO (with a million O's) understand every word (minus the adoption part) ;) I feel exactly the same way with two of my kiddos. Auditory processing is tough. I wish there was a med similar to ADHD medication that could at least help the situation. Even though it sounds trite, you are doing a great job. For this particular situation, I love the saying, "This isn't a sprint. It's a marathon." At first that sounds daunting. But, it helps me to keep each day in perspective. One little win at a time. Love you guys!
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