When My Child With Special Needs Learned What No Adult Could Teach Her

My daughter, Esmé, has a developmental delay. She doesn’t yet speak or walk or eat with her mouth. Harder still, Esmé also struggles with a number of social cues. Her special education teacher has been working on waving for I don’t know how long. I lift her hand every night to wave good night to her papa. Every therapist waves hello and goodbye to Esmé, urging her to join them. Whether it’s because of her lack of control over her body or because she doesn’t understand, we don’t know, but Ez has never indicated any interest in waving. Never once has it seemed to register for her.

I’ve never truly worried that she wouldn’t have friends. I know there are kind and gentle souls out there waiting to embrace her. And I also know Esmé is sweet and fun — even if she can’t run or speak or play in a typical way — and that people are drawn to her.

But I certainly never imagined she would garner the kind of consistent and genuine friendship I have observed while she plays with her peers on the playground of the Taylor School where we’ve been visiting once a week for a year.

On the playground, I stay out of Esmé’s visual range while helping with the other children as they play. Esmé is almost constantly in the middle of a circle of friends. One moment she is sitting at the top of the slide with her teacher, Dorothy, banging her feet on the platform while other kids joyfully join in, laughing and getting louder as they see her happy response. Another moment I scan the playground and find her sitting up in a circle of friends. I had missed her — passed over her twice — because I couldn’t recognize her strong posture.

Last week as Dorothy and I pushed Esmé’s red wheelchair out to the playground, we heard the usual shouts: “Ezzy! Esmé is here!”

One of those shouts came from a girl just a few feet away. She ran right over to Esmé. As the girl approached, Esmé shifted to sit up straight as her back lifted off of the support of the chair. She leaned toward the girl who had stopped in front and to the left of Esmé’s chair. The girl raised her left hand and said, “Hi, Esmé!”

Esmé looked back at her for a beat, and then, pointedly, lifted her own hand and smiled back at her.

Dorothy and I audibly gasped. We glanced at each other, each of our faces clearly asking the same question, “You saw that, too, right?”

Just like that, her peer modeled something, and Esmé, on cue, returned the gesture. Esmé’s friend taught her what none of the adults in her life could: the signs of friendship.

However, what I keep turning around in my mind isn’t so much the gift that the school is giving Esmé. What I think about is the gift the school is giving to Esmé’s peers — like this little girl — by modeling inclusion when kids are old enough to understand she’s different, but not held back by that understanding.

I have come to terms with the idea that my daughter’s trajectory will be as unique and unpredictable as her combination of genetic disorders is unique and unpredictable. I have grown to understand all we really can know about Esmé is what we know of her in the present. I had to unlearn everything I knew about childhood and milestones in order to meet her there in the present.

But her friends have learned the right things from day one.

This is their friend, Esmé. She is going to be 5 in January. She doesn’t speak, but she knows her colors, letters and numbers. She can read. She doesn’t stand without support, but she moves through space in her dancing motion of rolling, pivoting and crawling. Perhaps, most importantly, she has a cat named Chicken. And she likes it when her friends make loud sounds on the slide.

Her friends have included her, as she has learned to mirror their signs of friendship.

And that’s exactly what kids should be learning on the playground.

Follow this journey on The Cute Syndrome.

The Mighty is asking its readers the following: Describe the moment someone changed the way you think about disability and/or illness. If you’d like to participate, please send a blog post to community@themighty.com. Please include a photo for the piece, a photo of yourself and 1-2 sentence bio. Check out our Share Your Story page for more about our submission guidelines.