Friday, June 24, 2011

Linguistics

Parenting a child with ADHD (that is, trying to do all the right things for their specific needs) is a little like living in a family where you must speak one language to one child and a different language to all the others.  You've been learning the language all along, but sometimes you are so tired that you just want to communicate in your native tongue.  Everyone else around you can speak it?  Why doesn't this kid just hurry up and learn it already??

It's not an exact comparison, but there are times in working with my children that I vividly remember a night when Todd and I were having dinner with several Brazilian families.  At the time I understood Portuguese fairly well.  All of my piano students at the time were Brazilian and Todd spoke it beautifully still, so I was exposed enough to pick up on a lot.  As the dinner wore on and it got later and I grew more tired, though, it was as if somebody switched off something in my brain and all of a sudden I couldn't understand anything that was being said around me anymore.  It was just gone for that night.

There are times when I would like to be able to speak in  my native tongue to all my children.  But the Lord seemed to think I could handle learning a new language.

There are times I do not agree.

2 comments:

Heather Snediker-Morscheck said...

I have the ultimate faith that if anyone can do it, with grace and with style, it shall be thee.

Emilia said...

Thanks, Heather. <3