Grammy Pammy WammyThursday, January 28, 2016

Children are rarely born perfect but in their parent's eyes they are. We count the number of toes and fingers they have when born and check them out from head to toe. All imperfections are considered correctable or acceptable making your child unique. After all you have made it this far in life and have now given life to another. Many are not as lucky and must suffer the pain of not being able to have a child at all.
Most imperfections can be corrected with a little patience and love.
My daughter suffered from blocked tear ducts for the first year of life which disappeared by her first birthday following the doctors instructions to the letter. Minor surgery to correct this problem would have resulted if we had not done as we were told. Another issue we faced was having to manage her high fevers for the next few years as a result, or so we were told that the part of her brain which controlled body temperature had yet to develop, but it would in time. It did, but not before she she went through several visits to the hospital to receive help to reduce her fevers from 105 degrees. She went into convulsions, her lips turned blue, became dehydrated etc. before miraculously all of this suddenly went away for good. Next we had to deal with her allergies which you only are introduced to because of a reaction and usually only one at a time. Fun and games we had but the end result was all of this went away and we were left with our perfect children.
This is, we thought they were perfect until they attend school where you are exposed to the so called experts opinion of your delightful offspring. My daughter was considered gifted but hard to handle in her early years at school. She liked to correct her teachers. Her friends sometimes took offense to her making adjustments to their art work so it would look perfect. At a birthday party one year her peers locked her in a room to separate themselves from her need to be right. Well she is now the mother of my grandchildren so she was perfect after-all producing these two absolutely perfectly wonderful, beautiful and loving kids.
My son had to have strabismus (cross-eyed) corrected by surgery but not before he went through the eye patch stage looking like a little pirate and walking into doorways because he was seeing double. Well now he has perfect vision, so it worked. The surgery, however changed him. He lost his appetite and went from being considered 95 % on the growth chart to 5% a year later. He stopped growing for a whole year. Yikes, this scared us but finally he grew and is now normal sized. Just before this we had to deal with his torticollis which means he had a crooked neck. After just over a year of physiotherapy he was normal. This was until this sport crazed kid who was loved by every teacher at his Junior School went to Middle School. This is when he was diagnosed with ADD. I always knew he hated sitting still so tried to keep him active but I was not ready for this. All the Doctor wanted to do was to medicate him which I would not allow. Somehow he made it through to adulthood managing the best he can.
I love my children with all my heart and like most parents do not want to see their imperfections. All of us are imperfect which is what makes us unique.
When my kids would say they were raised in a dysfunctional family, I would ask them to show me a truly fully functional one. There aren't any and any claiming they are must be lying to themselves because they do not exist. We learn mostly through our mistakes. Making a mistake makes us human. Maybe repeating the same mistakes over and over again might classify us as dysfunctional but most of us never allow our mistakes to take over our lives. We identify the mistakes and make corrections so we can move on to the next obstacle waiting to challenge us.
After all this is what makes life so interesting.