Four letter words

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.