When I get the urge to write something, I try to grip it
tightly so it doesn’t slip between my fingers in tiny wisps of smoke until all
that’s left is a few uninspired droplets of something that could’ve been much
bigger. And sometimes I don’t make it. It sort of reminds me of coaching my
toddler through holding in her pee until we get to her plastic toilet where she
can finally breathe a sigh of relief at having a safe place to put it.
This post is two-fold, and a little chaotic, much like my day
to day functioning. Our daughter has ADHD. When I bring it up in conversation,
I sort of mumble those letters together in one long string of sound like I do when humming the parts of a
song I don’t quite know. If we’re being honest here, I don’t know what they
imply anyways so I’ll just skip to the parts I know, like the chorus of a Bon
Jovi song. I know that society has a clearly defined idea about these letters.
The general population makes light of them. Educators generalize. These 4 letters
can thrust children into a part of a statistic that may or may not link them to
a school’s state funding. There are many things the letters could mean to many
others. I’ve been mulling over and over what these letters mean for us, for
her.
My husband told me a story recently about his golf swing. I
never use the right words when I talk about sports so I’ll refrain from saying
things like birdie and par, but I know he’s very good based on the newspaper
clippings from his childhood that could probably paper a wall in his parents’
house. He was awarded a full ride scholarship to a University where he played
on the Men’s golf team. He said his game changed in college and he wasn’t as
good anymore and then something interrupted us. Most likely a crawling child
trying to stick something metal in an outlet. I brought it up later and asked
what he thought the change was and he told me that his coach made him change
his swing. He gripped his pretend club, pulled it way back and told me that
this was how he had swung in high school. He said it was like John Daly, to
which I nodded and agreed because I like to pretend I know all the things, like
who John Daly is. Because of his unique swing, his coach wanted to streamline
it to improve his game even more, to teach him how to hold a club the way that works
so well for most others. Maybe it would make him even stronger. But he
described it as being similar to someone suddenly telling you to use your
opposite hand to write with. While he is still mega-talented and modest and
humble to a fault, he can pinpoint when he lost his footing in the game. The
time someone changed his swing.
And now my daughter has to change her swing. Just slightly.
Just enough to quiet the voice in her head that is rapid-fire telling her to
act first, do what comes naturally, and to continue to do it until someone
tells her it’s wrong. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. What’s natural for her isn’t the
norm. She’s the John Daly of the
first grade. And so now we’re face to face with the task of streamlining her
approach. Finding a way to shift all of her right-handed tendencies to the other
hand. And it’s hard for her. I want my baby girl to swing her swing, strong and
proud with a hint of fearless. So together we navigate this weird territory of
left-handedness and strange 4 letter words. We smile, do the best we can and figure out how to tame our
tiny girl's swing without losing her footing in the game.
