Who Decided???

Hyperlexia, its a word that has recently been added to our family's vocabulary. As I have mentioned in the past, during the last few months we were in Lexington Jace began seeing a speech therapist and a behavioral coach. He started about a month before Eden was born and continued until a couple of weeks before we left. I can't discount it, but I'm not 100% sure it was the cause of Jace's marked improvement. Within a month of Jace beginning he increased his vocabulary from nearly zero to more than 20 words. He began communicating outside of just dragging us to various locations and pointing to what he wanted. This also coincided with the birth of Eden and I have a tendency to believe he finally figured out that he now needed to communicate to get what he wanted.

Soon after his marked improvement the speech therapist began to notice something different about Jace. The behaviorist had already made comments eluding to the fact that she believed Jace to be mildly Autistic. And now the speech therapist believed Jace had a "disorder" called Hyperlexia. We had all noticed that Jace would open books and begin "reading". I say this, because it was surprising and hard to believe. It was always only one word at a time, but it was always a word he said without prompting. In addition to this I might add that Jace already knows his entire alphabet and can count to ten now. He is only a couple of months past two years old now and it's the only explanation I could believe at the time the therapist told us. He was socially awkward but intellectually more advanced than that of the other kids his age.

Now I bring this up because I recently read a post on a fellow parent of a Hyperlexic child, Ben. She says:

"I simply want to acknowledge the murkiness and complexity of having - or not having - a diagnosis, a label, or the status of "disability" attached to one's differences."

Her assessment of a situation her son was in is like many I have seen even in Jace's two short years of life. And I have often wondered about this since receiving Jace's "diagnosis". I wonder why it is that we as a generation of parents feel the need to label everything thing our children do or do not do?

Recently, Eden has been having difficulty sleeping through the night. Granted, moving has disrupted our schedule and hasn't helped, but it shouldn't be this bad. One thing it could be is teeth. Jace and I both got teeth at a very early age. The other is that she is just plain too hungry. We have made the decision to start feeding her cereal and then start with solids a couple weeks later. She will only be four months old in a couple of weeks and we know this is a little early according to the "charts", but I don't care.

When did we as parents start to care what others say and what others have deemed "normal"? Why is it that everyone needs to be put into a cookie cutter shape molded by someone we never met or who has ever even met our child. And I'm not talking about the therapists they see, I mean the people who invented the names themselves. These labels were researched and thought through I am sure by some very intelligent people, but lets be honest...do they know our children personally? No, and yes it's nice to have somewhere to start and say, "okay, this approach may help my child", but why must we judge our children based on a label that may or may not be accurate? Why is it that our schools have to be so overrun that a child can't be given the attention that is needed to help them thrive, regardless of their individual "label"?

I really want to know who made these decisions and then makes us feel inadequate in our roles as parents? Because in my expereince when I make the decisions I feel are best for my children after prayer, study and discussion with Alan they are generally the choices that help them the best. Anyone else out there feel the same or different for that matter?