The Caregiver's Corner: Seeing Yourself in Your Learning Disabled Child

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by Merely Me
Monday, February 01, 2010

What is that old saying?  The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.  I believe this is true to some extent.  Everyone on the planet is unique but we all also come from a certain gene pool where some traits and even disorders and disabilities are more likely.  There does seem to be a genetic component to learning disabilities as it has been noted that learning disabilities tend to run in families.  The Learning Disabilities Association of America states that "...50% of learning disabilities appear to be inherited genetically, and one realizes that all adults with learning disabilities are at high risk of having offspring facing the same kind of challenges and heartaches in school and in life that they themselves have had to face."  This may also be true for disorders such as ADHD.  Health Central's ADHD Central reports that: "The relatives of ADHD children (both boys and girls) have much higher rates of ADHD, antisocial, mood, anxiety, and substance abuse disorders than the families of non-ADHD children." Other studies, such as the one I reported on last September on Friends of Quinn  are looking at particular mutations of genes as the cause of things like mental retardation, dyslexia, or autism.  So clearly genetics does play a role in all this.  But this will not be a post about genetics research.  The following are my personal reflections about seeing much of myself in my son despite the fact that he has autism and I do not.

When you have a child who has a particular disability it can be easy to point out the differences between that child and his or her other siblings or even yourself.  Sometimes it may even seem that you are from different planets.  In my frustration in trying to understand my son who is wired up differently than most, I sometimes fail to see that he is more like me than not. 

I remember when my Max was four or five.  We would go to a nearby lake.  I would take his wagon and I would pull him through a small trail in the woods.  There we would sit on a bench and watch the lake as it glistened in the sunlight.  We would usually bring some sort of snack and sit there silently as we dined on pretzels, raisins and carrot sticks and sipping juice boxes.  Other times I would bring a net and a small container to catch little fish or maybe even a tadpole or two.  The thing that stands out most to me during these times alone with my son was the fact that we did everything wordlessly.  My son wasn't really talking much at that time and while I felt sad about it, I didn't mind the silence with him.  I always berated myself for not chattering to him more, for not immersing him with the sound of my voice and endless streams of language.  For a good part of the day we did just that with home based therapy and goals to enrich his speech.