Celebrate your child's love of learning

© Wondertime

No one thinks they'd be good at raising a child with special needs. Until a child becomes your child.

A dear friend, in her first trimester of pregnancy, called in a panic when some early screening tests came back with questionable results. "I know I'd be a terrible special needs mother," she wailed. Strange that she was having this particular panic attack with me, when my oldest son Ethan is an 11-year-old with autism, and her worst-case scenario is basically the story of my life.

I tried to bring the voice of reason: Those tests are always dicey, this baby will probably be fine. I also told her something my prescient mother said when I was having a similar flight of fear during my first pregnancy. "If your baby has problems, you'll deal with it. You'll do what you have to."

What I wanted to tell her is that no one believes they'd be good with a child who has special needs. Presumably one decides to have a baby to put a certain limit on the navel-gazing and solipsism of life before children, but for most people there's a ceiling to their desire for martyrdom. "I'm too selfish," my friend wailed, exactly the sort of thing I once said myself. If I remember correctly, I think I even added, as a stab at sounding open-minded: "I guess I could deal with anything except cognitive issues."

Now that I have a child with special needs — with cognitive issues and more — I've learned that it means years of walking through a world filled with doctors and therapists and what feels for a long time like many closed doors. Everything that other mothers and babies were doing seemed like a trial: Mommy and Me groups, toddler swim lessons, baby gym classes were all an exercise in watching my son withdraw and retreat. It was a long, slow realization that brought with it a surprising measure of relief: He'll never look fine, so why bother trying. With that understanding I began to see what it took me far too long to grasp: This wasn't about what other people thought, or how we looked, or how well he managed to blend into a group of other children his age. This was about him, enriching his world, widening it as far as possible for him.

In the weeks after Ethan was diagnosed, just after his third birthday, I felt as if I'd walked through the only door that felt open at the time — into the world of other parents with special needs kids. And there I found, to my surprise, a group of parents who dwelled not on their misfortune but on the details of their children, a thousand specifics that, once you looked at them, were oddly fascinating. "My son loves drumming," one mother told me. I didn't know her son well; I only knew that he was 18 years old with "multiple issues." He was blind, deaf, and used a wheelchair, certainly a worst-case scenario for many people, but there was also this: With a drum in his lap, he could keep a steady beat, feel music through his feet, and play along accurately. Imagine the feeling his mother had discovering this. For everything he couldn't do, look at what he could.

As it turns out, music is a godsend for many of these kids, an avenue into an otherwise tangled brain. A while back, my own son, who struggles mightily with writing, was trying to spell the word face and did it first by singing, in perfect pitch, the piano notes F-A-C-E. How inefficient, of course. How convoluted. But it also has to be said: How interesting. Since then, he has discovered his own love of drumming and has joined his public elementary school's beginner band, forging a path not only to learning, but, at last, to other kids.

When I made the passing remark years ago suggesting that I could deal with anything but cognitive impairment, I suppose I thought having a child who saw the world in simple terms would quickly grow old. The reality has been the exact opposite: A child with special needs is endlessly interesting. No matter what a doctor tells you to expect, these children follow no prescribed pattern of development, making them in many ways less predictable and more compelling than their typically developing peers. If I'd had a glimpse when I was pregnant of what Ethan's life would be like — how hard it would be sometimes to be his mom, how lonely and frightening — I know I would have wept and said I could never do it, not in a million years. But then the actual child comes, with big green eyes and doughy cheeks and, even as a 3-month-old, a sensitivity to music that makes him stop wailing instantly if he hears a thread of opera. You watch his little face furrow to the music, taking it in like an adult, and you think: This child seems so different, in ways that are both hard and good. And then the face and the particulars simply take over. You couldn't do it in general, but for this child, this one, you can. And you do.

About the Author: Cammie McGovern is the mother of three sons and the author of Eye Contact, a mystery about an autistic boy who witnesses a murder. Ethan, a Bruce Springsteen fan, is planning to invite The Boss to his next birthday.