Unanswered Prayer

I've written before about my youngest son being the closest thing to Ricochet Rabbit I've ever seen. Twenty to thirty minutes after he wakes up he's bouncing off the walls looking for new ways to enjoy life. He's not destructive by nature. He is a really sweet kid who longs to please his parents and is devastated when he disappoints one of us. That said, things tended to get broken just by being in his general area.

When he was four we tried T-ball. It was an unmitigated disaster. He'd been to all the practices. We'd practiced some at home. But, when game day arrived he had no idea what he was supposed to do. The game moved so slowly that it was impossible to keep his attention. When the ball did finally get to him he had no idea what to do with it. By the end of the second game he was done and I was relieved.

Something strange happened after that second game. A woman approached me and said, "one of my boys has ADHD. He was the same way. Get him to a doctor and get him on some drugs. All your lives will be better for it." That was the craziest thing I'd ever heard! Purposely put my little boy on drugs? I thought, "she must be on drugs herself!"

Six months later he started Kinder Garden. Within two weeks the teachers were all extremely frustrated. They were practically screaming at me, "Get him on drugs or get him out of our school!"

I told them, "none of you are doctors and I refuse to accept your diagnosis." We went to our pediatrician and he said almost the exact same thing as me. He gave me a survey for each of my son's teachers to fill out. It came back almost unanimously bad.

At the same time, I went and spoke to the children's church director and asked her about him. She said, "Dean, he just seems so frustrated. He wants so badly to be good."

I called a friend of mine who is a teacher. He asked, "what did the survey say?" When I told him he replied, "Dean, I've been a teacher for a decade. I've worked with other teachers all of those years. You can't get us to agree on anything. If they are all saying there's a problem, than there's a real problem."

I'd been fasting and praying for a different solution but, none came. I relented and got the prescription. I felt like a complete failure as a parent. How could I let my little boy be condemned to having to take drugs just to be able to go to school?

When I took the prescription into the school nurse she could tell I was not happy. She started asking me about it and we quickly got to, "I don't want my kid on drugs." Her reply was just as simple. "More than seventy percent of these kids who don't get medication end up self-medicating."

I blurted out, "That's what I did! I don't want that!" My reply made her very uncomfortable. But, what she'd said set me free. I don't want my son going down that destructive path. Because I was forced to deal with this issue very early on, I may have been pre-empting something much worse in the future.

Now I see things much differently. My son's daily medication isn't any different than asthma meds. It's just a different malady that he's being treated for. I thought I'd been "defeated" as a parent. What really happened is my son was surrounded by people who had no personal interest but, wanted to give him a lifelong victory anyway.

Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers.

That's my view from here.