Remembering where we were

When I have doubt or fear that Ryan's progress is too slow or that he'll never "get there", I often re-read my personal diary that I sometimes keep.  Usually I only write in it when I really, really need to get stuff out of my head.  It's often in stops and starts.  Sometimes I'm writing a book, sometimes a poem and sometimes it's just random ramblings.

I recently read an excerpt about the day when I realized, to my very core, that things weren't going to be an easy ride for my guy,  He'd finally started with the Occupational Therapy (OT) for his handwriting,  This was about halfway through 3rd grade.  We were thrilled.  Finally - we thought.  We'd waited a year for these services.  In the initial report that we received it was noted that when the Occupational Therapist asked Ryan to identify the letters of the alphabet he could correctly identify about half of all the letters in upper case and about a quarter of the letters in lower case.  I cried.  I cried like I have never cried before.  Then I marched over to the school to discuss what our next steps were.  We were dumbfounded.  How can a child get to grade three and NOT know the letters of the alphabet?

This is when I began to truly understand the depths of Ryan’s disability.