Why You Need to Celebrate Ev-uh-ree-thing

Don’t just celebrate the big things in your family; celebrate the small ones, too.

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For previous posts in this series, click here.

What is your reaction when your team wins an important game? How do you respond when your child comes home with a trophy or award of some kind? What do you do for special occasions like birthday, anniversary, Christmas, New Year’s Eve or Independence Day? Hopefully, the answers to these questions are that you celebrate! Cultures have for centuries commemorated special days or events by getting together and throwing a party.

Our family is no different; we like to party too. Between birthdays, anniversaries and holidays, we have the calendar covered with special events. It’s fun to invite guests over and throw a big shindig; it’s a great opportunity to create special memories. But in our family we don’t just celebrate these big things; we celebrate the little things too. Every. Little. Thing.

This is the final article in this series and I saved the fun one for last. I wanted to end on an upbeat, positive note. We’ve journeyed through several subjects related to having a special needs family. Some were tough to think about, let alone live through them. Some were just informational or intended to be helpful. But this one…it makes my heart smile. Let me correct that; it makes my heart soar! There are routine things that seem very ordinary to most people but to my family, they’re causes for celebration. Please indulge me the time to tell you about some of them, and then give you a challenge.

My 18-year-old daughter who has vision impairment is very quiet. She was even more quiet and shy when she was in elementary school. She was intimidated by her new teachers in her new, much bigger school in the 4th and 5th grades and found it difficult to speak up for herself. So when she became an active partner in advocating for herself, we were proud parents. A few years ago, when my daughter was contacted by her former Orientation and Mobility instructor to ask her if she’d like to be part of a student panel at an annual conference for vision impaired and blind people, she happily accepted. I was shocked at her willingness and excited for her opportunity to share with others. And years later, I still brag on her for it.

She has had to overcome so many obstacles and grieve so many losses of what she can’t do that her normal-sighted peers can do. But she has done so gracefully. She’s in college courses now to pursue a career in social work. She’s going to be dang good at it too, partly because she has gained some empathy from understanding what it’s like to live with a limiting disability. I cannot even begin to describe my elation about this with human words!!

Our 4-year-old has the same vision impairment as well as autism. He does things on a regular basis that create joy for us. When he was not quite three years old, he had a limited vocabulary and what he did say was sometimes difficult to understand. He said a lot, but we didn’t know what; his speech therapist through the Early Intervention program called it “babbling with intent.” Eventually, that babbling became lots of intelligible words. By the time he had completed one semester in Early Childhood Education, he experienced a virtual vocabulary explosion. We were in awe of what he had accomplished (thanks in large part to his speech therapists). So we cheered him on in his efforts!

Another struggle he has is fine and gross motor skills. So he receives lots of occupational therapy. For little guys and gals, therapy looks a lot like playing, so they usually go along with it. Riding a tricycle was a skill he went from really struggling to get the pedals going at all, to riding with ease down the long hallway in the therapy building. I clap and holler for him at his therapy sessions (so does the staff)!

ABA therapy (applied behavioral analysis) has been a wonderful tool for us as well. Several months ago, when my son would drop a toy, he’d cry about it. With direction from his therapist, I learned how to help him look at the situation differently, that he has control over it. I helped him to see that all he had to do was pick it up and play with it again. No more tears. Tah-dah! A similar situation was with transitions from one location to another; they didn’t always go well. If it was somewhere he was looking forward to going, then it was easier. But if I was interrupting his fun or he didn’t want to go to the next location, then we had a meltdown on our hands. Once we learned to use a picture schedule and to involve him in it, the meltdowns were greatly minimized. Let the celebration begin!

We get excited when our kids reach goals and perform tasks that their “typically developing” peers do with ease. Because we know how hard it was for them, it makes it that much more exhilarating for us. Putting on socks and shoes independently may seem rather ho-hum to you, but when my son does it, I become his greatest cheerleader.

Besides the unusual giddiness, did you notice another running theme? It’s that we had a lot of help along the way. My husband and I didn’t fly solo in this; we tapped into a lot of resources. Several specialists and therapists have invested “sweat equity” into our kids and we are grateful beyond words. As a side note, all of this didn’t go unnoticed by our second daughter. Largely because of what she has witnessed in her front row seat to her little brother’s interventions, she wants to pursue a career in special education—bravo! (I’m proud of her too.)

So here is your challenge from me: look for all of the little things to celebrate in your special needs child and encourage him/her. Maybe you already do; that’s great! I’m not suggesting that we artificially puff our kids up with a false ego. In my humble opinion, we’ve tried that in the public school system and it’s failed miserably because now kids won’t do anything unless there’s something in it for them. But that’s a whole other topic for a different day. I do propose, however, that if someone is truly struggling in an area, and we see progress (no matter how small), we can bring attention to it and genuinely congratulate the efforts. Celebrate ev-uh-ree-thing!

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Photo: Getty

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