The days my heart seems to break the most are the days when I spend time with our two youngest together. One adopted out of foster care. The other, my first experience with a child from birth. In glancing at the picture above, you’d never guess that some days the one in the stroller is more mature and developed than the one running ahead of us down the path to the park. On this particular day, our therapist said something pretty profound when I expressed how much I struggle to meet this child where he is – even more so on the super regressed days. She said to approach him like I approach our toddler. And she said it so simply and without reservation I couldn’t help but stare at her.
It was a challenge laid out in front of me: When he’s behaving like a toddler, mother him like a toddler.
The science and premise behind this is pretty straight-forward, but the emotional piece and my own comfort zone often get in the way. It is difficult to take the child standing in front of me and remember in some moments he is really a hurting 18 month old. It is frustrating to hear amazing reports from his teachers about his accomplishments on grade level work and be met with a child who can barely remember 1 + 1 while doing his homework after school. It is exhausting to be met with defiance and tantrums over the word no when the tantrum thrower is a 65 pound 10 year old.
But if I can find the space within my heart to remember that challenge, things look and feel different. On the days when these two young boys play side by side, the entire situation shifts and changes quickly. When I snuggle the toddler after he falls running to the slide I am reminded that his brother probably never ran to slides. Everything I’ve managed to learn about his childhood before me tells me he probably didn’t run at all at 18 months because nobody worked to teach him how.
When I change the toddler’s diaper because it is dirty, I am reminded that his brother might have gone all day without someone attending to him at that age. When I talk to Ray about starting the toddler on potty training, I am reminded that some of our kids showed up to our house having never been formally potty trained even though they were in elementary school. When I work to teach the toddler how to use a fork and a cup, I am reminded that his big brother was never taught how to do that which is why his table manners seem so rough. When I work to make sure the toddler is getting enough to eat, I am reminded that some of our kids spent years going to bed hungry. And when I raise my voice at the toddler because he’s doing something he shouldn’t, I am reminded by the fear in the eyes of his brother that raised voices may have been accompanied by pain.
And that is when my heart hurts. In those moments, and all the little moments in between when God breaks my heart to remind me what my yes meant. My yes to love this child, His child, so His loving arms can help heal what my eyes often fail to see.
And if that means I hand my big kid a baby fork so he can learn how to use it, then that’s what I’ll do. If that means reducing the homework expectations to meet his after school emotional age, then that is what we will do. If that means re-teaching potty training, showering, getting dressed independently, and how to remember what day of the week it is – We do it. If that means stifling my frustration with an elementary aged child who can’t tie his shoes, then with God’s help I will get down on my knees and show him how to do that too.
Raising this child is challenging. But not as challenging as the world he faced before God brought him through my front door.
If God can continue to pursue and teach me, in all my defiance, tantrums, mistakes, and regressions – who am I to not bestow that same grace to my child?