Bittersweet Moment on our life journey with SPD

"But by the grace of God, I am what I am." ~ 1 Corinthians 15:10

I witnessed a very bittersweet moment a few days ago involving our son L who lives with Sensory Processing Disorder. Having SPD go unidentified for the first 7 years of his life led to a certain dynamic among our children where L often got unduly blamed for things, or overly blamed for a minor offense (there have also been moments when he has used this to his advantage, but I have observed him being the "victim" more often than the "perp").

One of his struggles involves auditory processing, so although his ears work just fine, he will often not correctly process words he has heard me say ~ when it is a command to all the children the others get mad at him when they obey and he appears not to. He has tended to be easily frustrated and slow to use self control, so these behaviors, coupled with excessive blame by his siblings, have led to many conflicts requiring immediate intervention by me. We are striving to teach the children to treat each other with love and respect, to use words instead of hands, and to practice extending grace to others. Generally speaking, I am encouraged by the children's progress, but they are young. They have a long way to go (me too!). Read that: we are not there yet. There have been and are some very discouraging days, when I grow weary of intervening (we've been practicing this for months, shouldn't they know how to resolve this on their own by now?) , or feel sad at the emotional wounds L may bear. I am SO thankful the children are home with me all day, but nevertheless, there are moments of conflict when I am not present. Increasingly these are handled fairly well, but sometimes they are handled very poorly by the children involved. And since I cannot know which words, which actions are going to be the ones etched in L's memory, it weighs on me at times that a series of harsh responses from one of his siblings or friends (or me!) will inflict a wound he carries into adulthood. How thankful I am that I can trust L's future to God!

When L was "diagnosed" with SPD just over a year ago (I use the word "diagnose" very loosely since it is not yet a recognized diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), we had a talk with our older two children. Trying to strike the balance between not making it a big deal, but understanding where L was coming from, we explained that he had something like a traffic jam in his brain. Messages couldn't get through properly. This was not something that could be "fixed" like fixing a broken traffic light would cause the traffic to flow smoothly again. We explained to them that what we and L would be working on was a detour around the traffic jam. A way to go around the jam and still get the messages through. It would take re-learning on L's part, and patience on our part, and we urged the children to pray for their brother and to have compassion for him, knowing that some of his "L-isms" were things he couldn't necessarily help.

Fast forward to last week. I had been to Sam's Club and had purchased a large box of Quaker Oats breakfast bars. The kind with frosting dribbled on top! These make a convenient food for my husband to eat in the morning while driving 45 minutes to his part time job. They are also irresistible snacks for children who have not had much convenience food lately. :-) Unbeknownst to any of us, L helped himself to 3 of them during a single afternoon. That night he let it slip that he'd had 3 bars that day. The other children began to protest, and one in particular started to really let L have it. I could see L sortof square his shoulders and prepare for the onslaught. I stopped it immediately and explained to the children that L had done nothing wrong! No need to treat him like a criminal. He was hungry and found something to eat, that was all. Then I explained to all of them that from now on these bars were to be reserved for daddy's breakfast and their snack during Friday co-op. On other days we would have other snack food. I addressed L directly and reassured him that he'd done nothing wrong. And I asked him to repeat the new rule about these bars, which he did.

Then, he cried.

Not sobbing, but quiet tears down his face. He was so sure he was going to get in trouble for eating 3 bars, that when he didn't he was overwhelmed. My heart broke knowing that he has come to expect to always be the scapegoat, but also warmed as I watched him experience grace.

"My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness." ~ 2 Corinthians 12:9

"Lord Jesus, thank you for making our son L just the way You did. Thank you for entrusting him to our care. Please give us wisdom to parent him well, and to justly distribute mercy to all of our children. Give the other children your love for their brother L, and help him to learn how to circumvent his traffic jam. Help us to parent with grace, even when we are sometimes frustrated ourselves. Thank you for always pouring out Your grace on us. You are the perfect parent. I love you. Amen."