Making Lemonade

Or, lemonade appears

First a brief update: I believe I said “careful” once today, which is a considerable improvement.

Having a child with special needs is never ending whirlwind of disappointment, sadness and the occasional small victory. The interesting thing is many times the small victories come when you don’t expect, and usually not as a result of anything we have done.

Declan is not toilet trained yet; he may never be toilet trained in fact, which is something I try not to think about lest I get overwhelmed. As he gets older and bigger, it becomes harder and harder to find supplies that fit him. So begins the cycle.

Both in conversations with friends and previously in my writing, I’ve described parenting as a bizarre version of whack-a-mole. Problems keep popping up, we try to knock them down, new ones come up, etc. I remarked to a friend recently this phenomenon is probably true for all parents, but having a child with special needs just adds a few more moles.

We find a new brand of pull-up that is a little larger we think might work, but it’s a slightly different style. So we need to check with his teachers and aides at school to see if they think it will work. They agree that it does, they report the transition has gone fine, and there we have it. Problem solved! Except, no.

His teacher tells us that for whatever reason, the way the new pull-ups are styled or made, Declan’s pants won’t stay up anymore. Our dude has always been extremely skinny, so finding pants that fit him in the first place has been a challenge, but he finally got to a point where most styles would actually fit him. Mole conquered. Except now, not so much. New problem.

His teacher suggested seeing if we could find some overalls, or even suspenders for him to wear to school to help keep his pants up. I was reluctant, because I wasn’t wild about the idea of having him dress wildly differently than the other kids. There are already enough differences, why do we need to add in more? But this was obviously a problem, so I found a company that makes overalls for bigger kids (and adults) and bought two pairs as a trial. Mole properly whacked? We shall see.

Now, at last, we reach our minor victory. The overalls worked and his teachers were happy. But even more than that, the kid looks cool in his overalls. Yes, it’s a little different, but somehow he pulls it off. Caryn always notes that because he’s fairly slim and tall, clothes tend to look good on him anyway — but I wasn’t sure that would sustain with the overalls. And damnit, he looks great. Now he’s got his own signature style (and yes, I also throw a pair of suspenders on him now and then, though I don’t think he pulls those off as well) and most days we send him to school in one of his pairs of overalls.

Our boy can make the overalls work.

Small victories. Is it a victory we particularly wanted? Absolutely not. Are there bigger victories we would much rather win? Yep. But we take the wins when we can get them. One mole down, many, many more to go.