someone special

Before Elliott was born, I was sitting around with some moms at a playgroup. We were putting together plates of snacks and pouring juice for our firstborns when one of the moms, dicing her daughter's cantaloupe, started off on a tangent about how she imagined the worst thing ever would be to have a child who was intellectually disabled.

"I could handle a sick child," she said. "But I just wouldn't be able to take it if my child had some sort of cognitive deficit."

I remember the moment distinctly because I wished I felt differently but I didn't. We were a group of moms thrown together because of both geography and birth rate who were bonding over nursing and toilet training and the best ways to treat for stains. We had all emerged from interesting careers and regular adult interaction to wipe spit up and bottoms. We were all intelligent, industrious women. And, without even consciously acknowledging it, we all had smart, beautiful, healthy children. So far.

On Friday I got a taste of a different world as Andrew and I sat around a table with a group that included a nurse, a school psychologist, a social worker, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist and a special education preschool teacher. We were there to hear their assessment of Elliott and their recommendations for him as he turns three this month and ages out of the state-run early intervention program and becomes eligible for school district services. There couldn't have been a kinder, more encouraging group of individuals than the women in that room on Friday, but to be reminded of the extent of your child's delays is still troubling.

Like so many families, I am now discovering, we have a son without a diagnosable condition but who lags behind significantly for unknown reasons. His bubbly, outgoing personality has erased any doubt that he's a spectrum child, but his difficulty grasping simple concepts and inability to express thoughts or carry on a conversation is worrisome. When it's just us, at home, hanging out together, we don't think about it. Elliott is our funny boy who squeals out to name everything he sees, "chair!" "kitty!" "bug!" Our boy who makes faces in front of the mirror, who throws everything he can get his hands on down the stairs, who screams at the top of his lungs simply because he loves to hear his voice. He cuddles, he listens to stories, he eats anything we put in front of him. He imitates his brother, he gets his shoes to go outside, he climbs on the counter. But put him next to a child his same age who's riding a two-wheel bike and excitedly telling us what he just received for his birthday and the contrast is stark.

All along I have felt that he's going to grow out of it. That someday he'll simply catch up. But after the gentle yet clear recommendation on Friday that our son be placed in the five-day-a-week special education preschool next year because he "has so many needs," it's beginning to sink in that Elliott's trajectory may be different.

This Mother's Day I have been thinking about what that mom said in those blissful first years of motherhood that none of us could even fully identify as such. What mother would want a special needs child? Who would think they could take it if their child was cognitively deficient? How do any of us, when we say these things, have the slightest idea of what we're taking about? When it's not you, it's all about you. When it is you, it isn't about you at all.

I have a special needs child. He's funny and beautiful and loving and curious and smart in his own unique ways. And, honestly, no matter how long he wears this label, I couldn't be a luckier mother.