For the parent who is feeling discouraged and overwhelmed about their child’s learning disability:

Your child is not broken.
Your child is not defective.
Your child does not need to be fixed.

Sometimes, it can feel like these things are true because your child doesn’t read or calculate or function like most children you know. It can feel like that when others are pointing out the ways your child is not fitting in or the ways your child is failing at school.

As people we often make judgements about who is acceptable, and who is not. Who is intelligent, socially-acceptable, deserving, or beautiful…and who is not. We decide people’s worth depending on their skin color, or how much money we perceive them having, what their body shape is like, what sorts of accomplishments they’ve gained. We make judgements about a student’s intelligence based on how well they move through the school systems we’ve set up.

If we view our children as broken and messed up, chances are high that they too will believe this lie about themselves. And it will crush them. It will crush their souls, and the world will miss out on knowing this individual who has so much potential and so many unique gifts.

We know that a large portion of those in our U.S. prison system are there because they were deemed unworthy and broken because of their skin color. There is also a large group of individuals who are in this “school-to-prison-pipeline” because they were labeled as stupid or non-intelligent because of learning disabilities. Others are there because their extremely high intelligence was not seen or recognized as such. They didn’t fit the school’s pictures of a good student, so these highly intelligent students who were bored in school, were deemed defective.

These are the children we must see, understand, and support in their unique needs.

Your child is not broken.
Your child is not defective.
Your child does not need to be fixed.

Your child is a beautiful individual. They are unique. They hold so much potential. Yes, they learn and think about life differently than the majority. That is ok. That is normal. That is even a unique gift, this skill of seeing and experiencing the world differently.

We have to shift our mindset about these things. We need to see, really see, our children and appreciate who they are. They are wonderful and amazing in so many ways, ways that we forget to stop and take notice. They have much to offer us and the world, if we will just encourage, support, and believe in them.

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