Lost child, found something newBy Mark
My wife and I are the proud parents of two young boys, Jacob and Elijah. Jacob is about to turn 5, his brother 3, and they are nigh on inseparable. There are a lot of reasons – obviously they’re pretty similar in age, they are both obsessed with cars and balls, and they both have a condition called Occular Motor Apraxia. Basically OMA means that, to varying degrees, their brains have difficulty communicating with their eyes. So when they were very young if they wanted to look at something they had to ‘throw’ their heads in that direction, or settle for using their peripheral vision. For reasons no-one can adequately explain, OMA kids also have trouble with low muscle tone and balance, which can lead to delayed walking, speech and, well, just a whole lot of things kids normally ‘pick up’. One of the big struggles for our eldest boy is going to the toilet – needless to say, it’s a big struggle for his parents too, heh. So we’ve been toilet training Jake for about nine months now. He has to be put on the toilet and talked through pretty much everything because his low muscle tone means he can’t ‘feel’ what’s going on like most kids. I’ll have to admit, it can be a pretty debilitating process for him, as well as his mum and dad involving lots of struggles, tears and clean-ups. But he’s basically a cheery lad and we just take each day at a time. The day that began this blog, Jacob was off to pre-school. Maia, my wife, was sick and had to spend most of the day in bed. So I asked my boss for the day off and got to work getting son number one to school. It was touch and go but between checking Maia’s lists and muttered prayers, I managed to get him successfully through the door. Then it was off to do the shopping, play time with Elijah, some emails etc. until I arrived back to pick him up. Not everything went to plan that day, so when Jacob’s carer at the pre-school informed me they’d ‘lost’ him for awhile I was initially wondering whether it would be another black mark to confess to my amazingly patient wife. But the carer quickly explained that they hadn’t been able to find him to take him to the toilet – until they looked in the bathroom. After nine months our boy had finally decided to take himself, and there he was sitting proudly, pants around the ankles, going about … well, his business. It’s a small achievement, I know, and sure there’s lots of ground to cover yet, but it reminded me that there is a hand that carefully controls the struggles we deal with. They don’t go on forever and they aren’t pointless – there’s an article on the site that lays it out well. Our God uses struggles to carefully bring our attention on to Him, the solution to all our problems. Maia and I look back on the last five years and realise that we would never have learnt to rely on our Father so much if they hadn’t been the struggle they were, or come to love Him so much for the patience He shows and the mercy He bestows. We think we’re spending a lot of time teaching Jacob (with varying degrees of patience and endurance), but God never goes to sleep on the job and watching my son climb up on the toilet reminds me He’ll see us all the way to maturity as well. |
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My child got lost at pre-school recently, and it was probably the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time.
