On Learning and Living, and Being Who You Are

Micah is not so much into academics. Shocking, I know. He's a hands-on, run-all-day, learn-through-adventure kind of kid. It's just how he's wired. When he has homework, it's a struggle of immense proportions. There's a reason that I make teachers fight him - it's because I don't have the energy to do it myself. (Sorry, teachers. But you know that I love you!) I know that they do fight him because there was a note on one of his papers yesterday that said "20 minutes, 2 broken crayons, 3 tossed crayons" and it was just a sheet with 5 objects to color.

So you can fully understand that over summer, we don't make the boy do any school-related work. Sure, I count with him as we put toys away, and I tell him that his right arm and then his left arm are slipping through his shirt holes, and I tell him all the colors of cars that he has. But I don't make him do anything. I don't ask him which color is yellow, I don't ask him to help me count to five, I don't ask him to color this picture of Woody for me. I let him enjoy summer while subtly trying to infuse learning into his active mind.

And I don't require him to use his Voice.

This was a struggle for me. That Voice, sitting there on the counter every single day, just waiting to be used, wasn't. That Voice, that we spent so many months fighting for, collected dust. That Voice that could make a huge difference in his life and ours. It sat idle for three months.

I worried that when I sent him back to school he'd have forgotten how to navigate his way around, or would simply decide that it was too much bother to use at all.

And then I talked to his aide, who was amazed at how far he'd come over summer. He can now recognize 9 out of 11 numbers (last year it was a 50/50 shot when there were only 3 or 4 numbers involved), he knew all his colors, and he was making sentences on his Voice. Two, three and four word sentences. We were both amazed. And thrilled. And it just reinforced to me that sometimes kids do so much better when they can learn at their own pace and not be pushed, and prodded, and made to do extra math worksheets because they got a 96% on the last test.

It always amazes me that Micah amazes me. I think it is still attached to that non-verbal thing that he has going on. When I can't hear him count, or hear him say it's a yellow truck, or hear him recite the periodic table of the elements (hey, who knows what the kid knows) I just assume that he doesn't know these things. And then I wonder how many other people think the same way. How many others judge him to be mentally lacking just because he can't talk? And then it gets me to thinking about mental disabilities in general. We, as a society, base so much on an IQ, as if it's the end-all and be-all to life. We think that smarter people are better people. We think that smarter people get the best jobs. While that is true to an extent, it's not entirely. I could have been a veterinarian (it was my career of choice, had I chosen a career) but instead I chose to be a stay-at-home mom and not grace the workforce with my presence. It doesn't make me stupid. It doesn't make me lazy. It doesn't make me inferior. It makes me a mom. It doesn't make me a better mom than a working mom. It doesn't make me a better mom than a single mom. It doesn't make me anything other than a mom to my own children. And that's exactly how I like it.

And even though Micah may never be able to tell us what he's thinking with any clarity, that doesn't make him less intelligent than anyone else. And if he never scores outside the mentally handicapped range on an IQ test that doesn' make him inferior to those who do. That makes him Micah. Just the way God intended for him to be. And I'll still be his mom, ready to take on anyone who judges him and finds him lacking for all the wrong reasons.