I'm a Special Needs Mom

I never realized I was a special needs mom until a year after our first adoption.

It had never occurred to me that our new kidlets were special needs. When I realized one day that they were struggling academically, and moreover, that they had trauma, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

An Aha Moment: they were special needs kids.

Another ton of bricks hit me when I opened my eyes to see that our bio son, now diagnosed as gifted with ADHD (referred to as 2e), is also a special needs kiddo, just on another end of a spectrum.

Whammy number three came when we finally discovered our bio daughter has autism – and were proved correct through formal testing and diagnosis.

Then we adopted 3 supposedly healthy, normal kids. Wrong! Huge special needs issues going on there, both behaviorally and academically.

In the past year we realized our oldest bio daughter is also 2e: gifted and dyslexic.

Another bio son is likely gifted, as well (he’s just like his older brother).

That leaves one bio daughter without any diagnoses at this time, though I do suspect something at play. We’ll likely get a neuropsych eval for her sometime next year.

For those keeping score, that is 9 out of 10 kids with various special needs, all added and/or diagnosed within 4 years.

To say we were thrown for a loop is a major understatement.

We’ve learned so much along this journey, and yet we are far from knowing it all, far from figuring out how to help them all. We’ve learned strategies, we’ve learned burn out, we’ve learned survival and thriving. We’ve attempted some strategies only to find they either weren’t working, required too much time commitment or money, or just didn’t feel right to us. What worked for 1 or 2 kids didn’t necessarily work for the rest, or vice versa. We’ve had ups and downs, bumps and bruises, sunshine and clouds, rain and rainbows, mountains and valleys.

But through it all, we are a family. And God’s love binds us, holds us, forgives us, strengthens us, molds us, leads us. As a family.

And that’s what being a special needs family is all about – leaning on God through each and every day, one day at a time, good or bad. 

God’s got this. 

God’s got you.