When Super Dad and I started out parenting, I felt that all of our children should be treated equally. Whatever we did for one child had to be done for every child, (Probably some baggage I carried from my own childhood.), and then we adopted children. A time came when I was compelled to begin homeschooling three of our adopted children.

However, since all of our children needed to be treated equally, I started my first year of homeschooling with seven students and a toddler in diapers. A few years later, I learned the truth. You cannot treat all of your children equally.

Because our children came from background with different degrees and types of abuse and/or neglect, their needs were very different. A child with dyslexia doesn’t need the exact same treatment, opportunities, or possessions as a child with an attachment disorder or a child with pituitary dwarfism.

If our goal was to help each child actualize his or her potential, (and it was) then each child’s needs had to be assessed, and met, on an individual basis. In some ways, this realization made our lives easier and in some ways it made it more complicated. I still struggle with internal guilt when I don’t provide each child with the same _____. (Fill in the blank…stuff, treatment, possessions, gifts, etc.)

Of course, our children had come to expect that, “All children should be treated equally.” So, when the equal treatment stopped, there was definitely some dissension among the ranks. One area that was particularly true was the area of discipline. You don’t know how many times I heard, “If I had done that you would have ______!” (Fill in grounded me, yelled at me, spanked me, taken away my favorite toy.)

Throughout the years, we have had children attend public school when they needed to. We have accessed speech therapy, counseling, vision therapy only for the children that needed those services. Some of our children take private music lessons and others play sports. We have tried to find each child’s niche and focus the extra curricular activities towards that.

I no longer treat my children equally. I treat them as the individuals that they are and acknowledge that their needs are different.

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It’s True! Adopting Special Needs Children Can Make You Nuts
Only One of Us Can Be Good at Home

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