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A Worst-Case Scenario
by Cammie McGovern

A dear friend, pregnant in her first trimester, called a few months ago in a panic when some early screening tests came back with questionable results.   “I know I'd be a terrible special needs mother,” she wailed.   Funny that she was having this particular panic attack with me, momentarily forgetting, I assume that my oldest son is a nine-year-old with autism, and her worst-case scenario is, basically, the story of my life.

I tried to bring the voice of logic:   those tests are always dicey, this baby will probably be fine.   I also told her something my prescient mother said when I was having a similar flight of fear during my first pregnancy.   “If your baby has problems, you'll deal with it.   You'll do what you have to.”

What I wanted to tell her is that no one believes they'd been good with a child who has special needs.   Presumably one decides to have a baby to put a certain limit on the naval-gazing and solipsism of life before children, but for most people there's a ceiling to their desire for martyrdom.   “I'm too selfish,” my friend wailed, exactly the sort of thing I once said myself.   If I remember correctly, I think I even added, as a stab at sounding open-minded:   “I guess I could deal with anything except cognitive issues.”

Now that I've had a baby and a child with special needs—with cognitive issues and more—I've learned that it means years of walking through a world filled with doctors and therapists and what feels for a long time, like many closed doors.   Everything that other mothers and babies were doing seemed like a trial:   Mommy and Me groups, toddler swim lessons, baby gym classes were all an exercise in watching my son withdraw and retreat.   It was as long, slow realization that brought with it a surprising measure of relief:   he'll never look fine, so why bother trying.   With that understanding I began to see what it took me far too long to understand:   that this wasn't about what other people thought, or how we looked, or how well he managed to blend into a group of other children his age.   This was about him, enriching his world, widening it as far as possible for him .

I walked through the one door that felt open at the time—into the world of other parents with special needs kids and found, to my surprise, a group of parents who dwelled not in their misfortune, but in the details of their child, a thousand specifics that, once you looked at them were oddly fascinating.   “My son loves drumming,” one mother told me.   I didn't know her son well, I only knew that he was eighteen years old with “multiple issues”; he was blind, deaf, and used a wheelchair, certainly a worst-case scenario for many people, but there was also this:   with a drum in his lap, he could keep a steady beat, feel music with his feet and play along accurately.   Imagine the feeling his mother had discovering this.   For everything he couldn't do, look at what he could.

Over and over I've witnessed examples.   The other night, my own son who struggles mightily with writing, was trying to spell the word “face” and did it by singing, in perfect pitch, the piano notes F-A-C-E first.   How inefficient, of course; how convoluted, but it has to also be said:   How interesting.

When I made the passing remark years ago, suggesting that I could deal with anything but cognitive impairment, I suppose I thought having a child who saw the world in simple terms would quickly grow old and the discovery, of course, has been the exact opposite.   A child with special needs is endlessly interesting.   No matter what a doctor tells you to expect, these children follow no prescribed pattern of development, making them in many ways, less predictable than their typical peers and more interesting.