I hear the familiar engine roar outside my window. Looking out, I see soil churning and my older brother pulling a piece of farm equipment through the field. Planting season is upon us. For my father, brother, and nephews, it is a season filled with long hours in the field working to get their crops into the ground.
A seed entering the soil seems fairly easy to someone like me. As I have learned, there’s much more to it than that. There’s information gained through soil samples that are configured into the season’s plans. Fertilizers need to be applied. Other applications need to be put on the crops to protect it from bugs or fungi. The men study the weather like their livelihood depends on it, which it does.
I don’t know enough about farming to go into greater detail. However, I have observed my family working tirelessly to protect the crop and ensure it grows to its fullest potential. For months, they will monitor the progress of their seed and estimate what its yield will end up being. At the end of the season, they will admit that their work and toil cannot overcome things like lack of rain or deer feeding on their plants. When it’s time for harvest, they celebrate their successes and learn from their losses.
I think about all the skills that have been planted in my daughter with Down syndrome over the years. When she was younger, there were therapists heavily involved in her progress. They made adjustments as they saw how she responded to specific exercises. When she was a baby, I recall the physical therapist twisting her lower half to teach her the movement of rolling over. When she started to hyperextend her neck, blankets were added behind her to prevent her from making the improper move. The day that she rolled over on her own was filled with photos, shouts, and celebrations.
Little moments like that have been taught, practiced, and celebrated again and again for nearly every area of development over her life. For speech, sign language was the method that was invested in for years. Then she progressed to learning how to communicate on a speech generating device until her speech eventually developed. Each step built upon the next and set the stage for further development. Every accomplishment represents hours and hours invested in her; therefore each one was exciting.
When people working directly with her didn’t have an answer to an issue that came up, I read books, looked online, and took trainings. I needed answers, so I could fix things. I wanted solutions and magic fixes to some problems. Eventually, I figured out that magic fixes were rare. Time was sometimes the answer; she just needed time.
I like things to happen quickly. Waiting and giving time for something to develop is difficult. Watching my daughter struggle and work can be disheartening. When everyone is giving their all, it’s hard not to get discouraged when the desired result doesn’t come. Most things in life do need time to develop; this is especially true with my daughter.
Image from @pazarando on Unsplash
Over the years, I have been through multiple seasons of planting and harvesting skills with my daughter. My daughter is now entering adulthood with disabilities. There are still skills that she needs to develop to make her life easier. The learning does not stop as she ages, however, the pressure I put on myself all of those years is gone. I don’t need to fix issues. I simply need to support her through them.
I continue planting seeds in my daughter and see what flourishes. I monitor her progress and help when needed. When growth is observed, I celebrate her success. It is a cycle that continues over and over.
Over the next few months, I will look out my dining room window to view the nearby fields. I’ll watch the seeds sprout into green plants. On boring nights, I’ll walk along the edge of the field and take pictures to send to my brother. At harvest, I’ll ask him how the yields turned out. He will give me numbers that I don’t understand. I will congratulate him on a job well done either way knowing that the cycle will start over again next year.
Evana is a wife and mother of two children. Evana is a pediatric speech-language pathologist and serves children with autism, feeding disorders, and other developmental delays. You can connect with Evana on Twitter, Facebook, and her blog, A Special Purposed Life. You can also read more about her family’s story in her book, Badges of Motherhood: One Mother’s Story about Family, Down syndrome, Hospitals, and Faith.
