Posted by Rosie Reeves on December 17, 2012 · 1 Comment
As the year draws to a close it’s a great time to appreciate the achievements your child has accomplished during the past twelve months, no matter how small they may seem to others. It’s also a good time to regroup and look to the future – break a large goal into smaller steps and praise each step (or stumble) along the way.
8 amazing achievements from my special needs child’s 8th year of life:
- She is finally sleeping through the night. Not every night, and not even most nights, but once or twice a week I am actually able to get a full night of rest…unless one of her brothers has an issue, or an illness, or a nightmare….meanwhile, I need to shop for some extra strength under eye concealer.
- For the first time, she read me a book. And she even read the actual words that were on the page!
- She can “get air” – she can jump and get both feet off the ground. This means she can now skip and play jump rope. It’s such a small thing to most other little girls, yet she worked long and hard to get there.
- She knows her name, address and my cell phone number. She even knows how to use our house phone to call out, as I discovered when I checked my voice mail!
- She now gets most of her nutrition from actual food, and only some of it from non-toxic items like erasers and moldable dough.
- She can pick out her own clothes and get dressed by herself. Not that she wants to, or that she does it regularly, but she has the ability.
She sat still for an entire dental visit and even allowed them to polish her teeth – HUGE! I remember a therapist working with her as an infant, trying to teach me how to desensitize her mouth so she could feed from a bottle and avoid a feeding tube.- She is usually the one with the doctor’s appointments, scrapes and boo-boos but the other day when her brother got hurt at school she went to the office with him, sat next to him and held his hand.
What achievements! I hope you’re giving yourself some of the credit for raising such a strong child who is clearly determined to live a happy, healthy life!