Captain America

You know it's not going to be good when the school calls you in for a pre-IEP meeting.

Our son's meeting was scheduled for Thursday, but they reached out via email the week before to ask if I could come in sooner. "We want you to be as informed as possible about the options we will discuss."

They don’t say that when the options are good.

However, I am glad I went in that afternoon. Our school psychologist presented visual data that helped me better understand where my son was testing and what we needed to do about it.

To back up, a year ago, we had gotten his IQ test from Colombia. My husband, (God bless him and his faith-laden optimism replied, "I simply don't believe those results. You can’t do an IQ test on someone who has been through that much trauma.”) You see, we knew our children had special needs, but this placed our son in a category we had never quite fathomed.

The pre-IEP meeting this past Tuesday, told us we had to. Our son had a severe Intellectual Disability.

The rest of my day was a fog. My husband's too. We couldn't quite understand the extent of the deficits being presented to us. But our frustrations from the past six months since he's been home started to make more sense. No wonder it has felt so challenging. Yet one thing does stand out from that afternoon, despite it's emotional haze. 

When I came home, he greeted me at the door wearing a Captain America costume I didn't even know we had. He smiled at me with his big beautiful eyes, and I knew something instantly. His heroism will look different that of my 3rd-grade daughter in advanced math, who is already worrying about her major in college. It will look different than my youngest daughter, who is almost seven and still in diapers. My children will forever be on the widest spectrum of talent and ability that you can imagine, and yet I believe God will use them all, heroically, for precisely what He has created them to do. I'm proud of them all, in their own ways, even on really hard days. 

"This is the fight of our lives, and we're going to win. Whatever it takes." Steve Rogers aka Captain America, Endgame

"I could do this all day." Steve Rogers, The First Avenger