titles & meaning
March 10, 2013 § 2 Comments
I have become acutely aware of titles these past seven years. Medical diagnoses and academic interventions have created new ways of addressing my children’s needs through measurements and labels intended to create opportunities to better understand and appreciate their abilities. Recently, test scores created a lesson in honesty and humility as I learned a little about myself and the meaning I assign to titles.
For years I have endeavored to weigh that which my children know against gray areas of uncertainty. Often the standard for measurement rests in test scores as reflective of academic ability. While administrators and teachers compiled scores into potential, I thought I had shed my need for validation in numbers. I dismissed placement as irrelevant and abstract, in truth I was very much tied to the titles I professed to disdain.
I suppose I could trace my own experiences as a student, drawing meaning and assigning value to how I perceive my children’s labels as students. I could also chart my daughter’s journey, identifying contradictions between labels and ability. Instead I will share pieces of my son’s story beginning eight years ago, his kindergarten year. An early reader, I championed my son’s abilities and noisily celebrated his earliest accomplishments; aware of an otherness we had yet to comprehend. I substituted academic success for social failings, consciously drawing attention to my son’s abilities to obscure gray areas of doubt.
By first grade we were armed with diagnoses that helped create a new consciousness. I embraced uncertainties determined to gather information. I set aside previous expectations grateful for answers to explain behavior and struggles that did not align with ability. When the teacher informed me our son would be tested for a Challenge program, I saw an opportunity for him to find belonging for his strengths. He tested at the same time we explored a new treatment and I allowed his perceived failure to be blurred by the variables outside our control.
Rather than deem my son excluded from certain opportunities by inability, I dismissed my own desire to label him exceptional. I adopted self-depreciating humor to camouflage disappointment. Underneath carefully choreographed casual disinterest was a secret wish that others would see my son’s abilities in neatly compiled data.
This year test scores placed him in a new limelight. Teachers, administrators, and we as his parents were faced with information that suggested a place of belonging in an advanced academic setting. My son might never be an athlete or musician, but for a moment there is a chance to give him a sense of belonging among peers for a difference that is worthy of respect. After years of feigned indifference, the truth is I am emotionally invested in these titles that define how others see the young man I try to shield from judgment.
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One day you’re going to find yourself feeling overwhelmed with pride for what he’s accomplished. And he’ll be unspeakably grateful for all you’ve done for him along the way. That’s what I think.
Well then, may your thoughts prove true. I couldn’t imagine a happier future than one in which my son’s dreams and our family’s hopes align in realization.