We’ve cried buckets of tears -- tears of frustration -- trying to find the balance between his special needs and the needs of the rest of our not-small family. We’ve had school officials intimate that his behavior would be better if we would just “handle him correctly,” despite our protestations that we are doing the best we can under the circumstances. The fact that his behavioral issues are typical for a child with his diagnosis does not stop them from assuming that we just aren’t doing things right.

But no one ever suggested we give him up to foster care.

We have no family nearby to “share the burden”.

We can still not assume that he will be dry at night, and not even always during the day, if he “forgets.” This is not uncommon with children with his diagnosis, but the laundry can be overwhelming.

But no one has suggested moving him to a group home.

The only educational institution available for children with his diagnosis is a program that is completely secular, and even somewhat anti-religious. So he goes to the same school as his brothers, and we spend hours talking to teachers and principals. But they don’t really know how to deal with him, and there is no funding for an in-school program for him. His rebbe refused the extra money we offered him in order to prepare lessons that were appropriate for him. His classmates don’t always understand him, and although he sometimes can play at a friend’s house, he is often socially isolated, which means that vacations and holidays are long and sometimes painfully lonely affairs.

But no one has suggested putting him up for adoption.

Because my son falls “between the cracks,” most of those little extras that he needs come out of our pockets, which are filled by two rather meager salaries and emptied far too quickly.

But no one ever suggested we pass him on to social services and let them worry about him.

We have a volunteer play with him once a week for 2 hours. We could use one every day.

But we never heard a word about sending him away.

We’ve asked and asked and asked for advice, but professionals, Rabbanim, and others have all said that there are no real answers. We have ordered books about other children like him, and read them cover to cover. The books have provided some advice and direction, but that is not the same as having someone guide you through. We have tried to network with other parents, but this is not the kind of thing people talk about very openly. If you meet my son briefly, you might not notice that there is anything unusual about him. Only after a conversation or some other interaction might you notice that he is not like his typical peers. So nobody talks about it. Other parents must be out there, but I haven’t found too many. I wish I had someone to talk to who knows what we are facing, and who has been there. I don’t.

But we would never consider raising him anywhere else but home.

He can drive us mad with frustration and then say the most unbelievable things, turning our tears to laughter. He is our son, and we love him.

I’ll never forget the day we went to pick up the final report. Hours of testing sessions by a highly recommended professional had finally resulted in a three- or four-page summary of my son. “How can a report possibly sum up our child?” we wondered. How can it capture the shades and nuances of his personality, the depth of his sensitivity? His strengths and weaknesses can’t be quantified with mere numbers. Why did we even go through with this? We had hoped to get some guidance, some direction. We got some, but far too little to cover the myriad issues that pop up when raising such a child. We entered the room and sat down in the comfortable chairs. “I’m not even going to look at the numbers,” I told myself. “He’s not a number -- he’s a child. What difference does it make?” And anyway, we already knew. Would a title change anything?

The psychologist turned to us. “Mr. and Mrs. Neumann, I assume this is no surprise, but your son is… a gifted child.”

And he didn’t tell us that there were warm, wonderful families waiting to take him off of our hands because he is too hard to manage.

So why -- when our next child was born with disabilities -- why did they offer warm, wonderful families to take him off of our hands because he was “too hard to manage?”


Reprinted with permission from the author and www.raananakollel.org

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