Raising Quinn

Related: VCFS, Parents, School

by Sally Quinn
Friday, October 31, 2008

At first I was shocked, then depressed, then ashamed. I wasn't supposed to have a child with learning disabilities. My first and only child was going to go to St. Albans' School and Harvard. That was the plan. Any other possibility was unthinkable.

Part of my feelings were based on guilt. It must be my fault. I must have done something to cause this. But I hadn't smoked or drunk or taken a single pill during my pregnancy. The shame was worse than the guilt. Somehow, in my mind, I had produced a damaged child. My husband and I had always strived for excellence. We wanted to be the best at what we did. We wanted the same for our child.

The conflict was enormous. The minute Quinn was born I said two things to him. The first was, "I love you" and the second was "You can do anything you want in this world." The first was the most important. The moment I saw him I fell in love in a way I never had before. The second was that I really believed he could do anything.

We had already been traumatized by finding out, the day after he was born, that Quinn had a hole in his heart. Then, when he went into heart failure at two months and ended up in Children's Hospital here in Washington, I was in a state of disbelief. It was clear he needed surgery and we kept him there for six weeks, watching as he slowly wasted away until they finally decided not to wait any longer to do the surgery. It was unclear at that point whether or not he would survive.

The night he had surgery I came home to change and in the shower I collapsed on the floor, my body wracked with sobs. It wouldn't be the last time.

Happily, he recovered from the surgery but it was soon obvious that he had developmental delays. He didn't begin to speak or walk on time. His motor skills were not what they should have been.

By the time he was two he was seeing a speech therapist and continued to have serious medical problems. He developed epilepsy. We put him in a nursery school at age three and he did so badly, even in the first three weeks that we hired a tutor to be in school with him. It didn't work. At age four we were told he would have to go to the Lab School, a special school for children with learning disabilities in Washington. I remember driving over to the Lab School, which was, in those days, a tiny school with a large ruin of a house in the middle of the grounds. I sat in the car and cried for hours looking at the school. I felt an aching sensation in my gut. I knew what we were in for.

I don't know what it was in me that changed my feeling. I must have done a lot of soul searching sitting in that car because something changed my attitude. By the time I got home and pulled Quinn into my arms I had recaptured that first belief I had in him, that he could do anything in the world. I was going to make him believe in himself, to help him to understand tha the was a magical person, which was true, and that he was put here to do great things for people. What he needed, what we all need was constant love and support. He was never out of someone's arms, either mine, Ben's, my parent's or his baby sitters. I funneled love into him every minute of the day. And I never stopped telling him he would do it. If he failed, I would say "Nobody's perfect" and give him examples of others who had accomplished great things who had failed many times before. Bradlees, my husband Ben told him, are late bloomers, but when they do bloom, look out.