My youngest of 6 children, David, is now nearly 4 years old. I want to show you a part of a recent letter we received from a GP regarding David, so you can get an idea of what he has:

“David was noted at birth to have a hairy lump at the top of his skull. He had brain imaging at around 1 year of age and this suggested that the lump was an atretic meningocele. It also showed agenesis of the corpus callosum, some abnormal collections of nerve cells in one part of the brain and abnormal position of some of the large brain veins.

David has significant development delay and hypotonia. His general health has been good.

In summary, David has evidence of abnormal neural tube closure (the atretic meningocele) and abnormal brain development (agenesis of the corpus callosum, neuronal heterotopia, abnormal anatomy of the tentorium and abnormal anatomy of large brain veins).”

Now, I did not actually realize how much of an impact such a statement could have on a parent until I received this letter, which is almost 3 years after these initial tests and diagnosis was done. All those words are quite long and scary and would suggest a handicapped child at the very least.

However, I paint a different picture. Although he can not speak the way other 4 year old’s can; although he can not walk quite the same way other 4 year old’s can; for some reason, he still understands me.

For example, even way back before he was two years of age, he fully understood the word ‘no’. To illustrate this, I was watching my wife play netball, and minding David at the same time (this is before David was even two). As there were other kids and plenty of noise, I let him walk around a bit. At any time he got too close to the court, I said ‘no’, and he would simply stop and turn around. After a few times, he learned not to even get too close. A simple example of a child learning something.

At the same time another child who would have at least been 4 if not 5 was uncontrollable. This child was your typical 4 or 5 year old when it came to talking and walking (well, more like running around and screaming), and nothing the parents did or say would stop this child. The child had no respect for the parents, and it was obvious the parents didn’t care about this fact one bit either.

There is no excuse for not giving your child both discipline and love, and I don’t believe you can have one without the other. On the other hand, it can be quite easy for parents with a child who is obviously a lot slower in their development, and has risks of long term neural issues, to be wrapping them up in cotton wool and even throwing things like discipline out the window…but not me, no way! And I’ll tell you why.

Kids need discipline no matter what because not only does help them with structure, guidance, boundaries and building inner strength, it demonstrates something about the parents too. Kids are going to imitate the parents regardless of their learning abilities, and if you are not firm, how on earth can that help them. You are the shining light for your children, the guidance, the god, the highway, the map, the example, the hero, the inspiration, and all parents should realize this.

Our kids need us more than ever right now and it is high time we pulled ourselves out of this dependant mind set and stop blaming the world for our problems. I don’t care if Obama is the saviour, why on earth do we need saving anyway? Because we have become too dependant on others for our well being and we are teaching our children to do the same thing.

I hope this inspires you to rethink the way you look at life if you feel like you need saving.

All the best
Dean

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.