In The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, she mentions that she learned to speak after her teacher visited Norway to study a girl, Ragnhild Kaata, who was also deaf and blind and had been taught to speak. Helen learned to speak by allowing the teacher to place her hand on and in her teachers mouth to feel her lips and tongue while she made sounds for all the letters. Can you imagine? Having to teach your child in this way how to speak? I certainly cannot imagine this, as Gavin learned to speak so easily and all the time!
As I read I thought that as painful as these last two weeks have
been for Gavin and I as a family to transition back into a different type of daily life, that even though we have
super hard days and his various misbehaviors... we are
so truly blessed in every way to have a child that can see and hear and
speak his mind without struggle. That when he kicks and screams
and tell me he hates me and hates the air force and he's stupid and his life is horrible, how blessed am I that he can express these feelings to me with voice and
that he can see me and hear me respond as calmly as possible and with as
much love as my broken heart can generate. What Helen and Ragnhild must
have felt inside and not been able to express without difficulty is truly hard to imagine. We are blessed, even on the hard days, so very blessed. If Helen could learn to make a beautiful life out of her amazing hardships, than so too can we.
1 comment:
You are so right. Parenting is so hard, but we're both blessed to have children who can talk and try to tell us what's the matter. I try to tell myself they'll only be little for awhile, and I need to enjoy them. Hang in there! I can't imagine how hard it is and what a time Gavin is having (and you) as you go it alone this year.
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