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Notes from a Dragon Mom - NYT


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Has anyone read this today? I cried.

 

 

MY son, Ronan, looks at me and raises one eyebrow. His eyes are bright and focused. Ronan means “little seal” in Irish and it suits him.

 

I want to stop here, before the dreadful hitch: my son is 18 months old and will likely die before his third birthday. Ronan was born with Tay-Sachs, a rare genetic disorder. He is slowly regressing into a vegetative state. He’ll become paralyzed, experience seizures, lose all of his senses before he dies. There is no treatment and no cure.

 

How do you parent without a net, without a future, knowing that you will lose your child, bit by torturous bit?

 

Depressing? Sure. But not without wisdom, not without a profound understanding of the human experience or without hard-won lessons, forged through grief and helplessness and deeply committed love about how to be not just a mother or a father but how to be human.

 

Parenting advice is, by its nature, future-directed. I know. I read all the parenting magazines. During my pregnancy, I devoured every parenting guide I could find. My husband and I thought about a lot of questions they raised: will breast-feeding enhance his brain function? Will music class improve his cognitive skills? Will the right preschool help him get into the right college? I made lists. I planned and plotted and hoped. Future, future, future.

 

We never thought about how we might parent a child for whom there is no future.

 

Rest of the article. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/opinion/sunday/notes-from-a-dragon-mom.html?emc=eta1

 

I think the lines that struck me the most were,

 

All parents want their children to prosper, to matter. We enroll our children in music class or take them to Mommy and Me swim class because we hope they will manifest some fabulous talent that will set them — and therefore us, the proud parents — apart...We’re not waiting for Ronan to make us proud.
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I follow the blog of a family that recently lost a daughter to Tay-Sachs. Interestingly, their daughter did make them proud, but not in the way they originally hoped. More in the way she taught those around her to view life.

 

It is devastating, though. There is nothing they can do.

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I follow the blog of a family that recently lost a daughter to Tay-Sachs. Interestingly, their daughter did make them proud, but not in the way they originally hoped. More in the way she taught those around her to view life.

 

It is devastating, though. There is nothing they can do.

 

I took her line to mean he has already made her proud rather than that one day in the future he might.

 

I guess I saw it more as a reminder to be proud TODAY.

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