They say he has a disability.
It’s a Friday night. The end of a week full of school and quizzes and tests and class work and speech therapy and other Things That Are Hard. After all of it, he is here, Friday night, working on math with his tutor. When his friends left school, their weekends began; they headed for their homes, their couches, their parks, their playgrounds. Nintendos and tablets powered up to play games of Minecraft and Roblox. He headed here. His school computer powered up to do work. More of it.
And yet. He has not complained once.
We walk in, he greets his tutor with a smile and a laugh, and he gets to work. “Bye, Mom. Go sit somewhere else.” I do.
But I watch. I watch as he pulls himself close to the table. As he hunches over his paper. Focused on his work. Trying. Always trying.
They say he has a disability. But that prefix. Dis. Lack of. It gets me. Because if you’re talking about test scores, academics - maybe the prefix works. But this? The attitude, the perseverance? The prefix doesn’t seem fitting. Not for him. Not for many kids like him. Not for what I see.
His teacher called me this week. “He’s always so happy and upbeat. Is he ever in a bad mood?” I tell her it happens, but it never lasts long. It’s true. She’s surprised; she can’t picture it. She, his teacher, whose experience with him is ONLY in an environment where he struggles the most, cannot imagine him being anything but positive.
I don’t say all this to brag on my kid. Except that maybe I do. After all, I am a proud mom.
And I don’t say this to deny that he has a disability. He does. There’s nothing shameful about it. The prefix, dis, may mean lack of, but it doesn’t mean less than. I know that first-hand.
But the word disability also doesn’t mean lack of ALL ability. It’s an important distinction. Because if you see my boy as someone who lacks all ability, you might pity him. Of course, you might also accept him or even include him - but you’ll never really see him, his strengths, his value, who he is: Someone who faces challenge after challenge, head on, with optimism and determination. In a way - with an ability - that is unlike any child or adult I have ever known.
Because you see, they say he has a disability. But as his mom, I see so much more. And also as his mom, I’ll make sure the world does, too.
Note: Lest anyone think I’m an awful mom, he does not typically have tutoring on Friday nights. This week was a weird one because of schedules, but he took it in stride.