Tuesdays Gone: How Do You Explain it to a Special Needs Child?

That's what I told my daughter, Megan, when she screamed one Tuesday evening that she didn't want tomorrow to be Wednesday, that she hated Wednesdays.

My response popped out without my having to think about it, which is a good thing because I didn't have any other answers. Megan has no reason to hate Wednesdays; in fact, depending on her mood on any given day, she's hated every day of the week at one time or another.

I can commiserate when it comes to Mondays, but that's about as good as it gets. It never occurred to me to dislike any day in particular unless there was a doctor appointment I wanted to get over with, or I was wringing my hands over an oral presentation I had to give in class.

Yep, just when you think you know your children and there's nothing new under the sun, they prove you wrong and come up with something you never thought about.

I have a co-worker who is already talking about what he will teach his unborn son, who is due to come into the world any day now. He's planned on the extracurricular activities the boy will do or sports he'll play, what he'll tell him when he's a teenager.

I wasn't quite so thorough with my plans for my first child, Lindsay, before she was born--we didn't even know she would be a girl. With the second child, the doctor performed an ultrasound and thought he saw the anatomy of a boy. The nurse believed it, too, because during the birthing process, she hollered, "Here come some little football shoulders!" When the rest of Megan appeared, she was speechless.

But I digress. While pregnant with Lindsay, I was given a soft cover book on what to expect from my newborn. I never got tired of it, reading it from cover to cover countless times. On the front of the book was a smiling infant and I just knew that was going to be my baby.

Boy, was I wrong. Lindsay cried a lot, and during regular check-ups the doctor said that was just the way some babies were. We were concerned enough to make an appointment to specifically address the crying, but to no avail.

Later, after we realized she was having seizures, we were told the soft spot in her head may have grown together too fast, and she was crying because of that. By contrast, Megan didn't cry much, but it turned out she had mental disabilities, too.

Today, as then, the girls have distinct personalities, and each in her own way is taking me places I've never been before, and each will continue to do so for the rest of my life. But I bet if you ask every other parent in the universe and they will tell you the same thing.

Ah well, it happens to the best of Tuesdays.