1. 2. 3. Dodgeball!

Dodgeball, Damn It!

I have a very competitive nature. I took personal exception to girls being commonly considered weaker than boys and spent most of my younger days proving this adage wrong. My parents both worked and we managed a large hobby farm with significant amounts of forested land and many ponds and streams. I had younger siblings and an older brother. Between us, we filled in many of the gaps in farm and household duties short of grocery shopping and paying the bills. It would really frost my cookies when I would get assigned the housework and watching my younger siblings while my brother and parents would have the much more interesting tasks of fencing, managing our cows and horses or cutting firewood. I learned to be extremely efficient with my household work so I could bust out the back door and out to where ever the action was. The same gusto was applied to my school days.

There aren’t many school yard games that can strike fear into the hearts of all ages quite like dodgeball. The day dodgeball was assigned in our P.E. class was the day most girls begged off for “girl problems”. I loved dodgeball. It was permission to belt that jerk across the court with a ball on purpose and never get in trouble. How could that not be awesome? As a girl, I was definitely in the minority.

It was this very game that gave me cause to celebrate much later in life and not because the movie was classically terrible and I must watch it every time I come across it on TV. No, I celebrate this game because it represented an extraordinary milestone for my youngest son. If you are mother of a child with special needs, you will celebrate along with me because baby steps are victory for us all.

Grant was born six week premature. I was extremely sick and it was dangerous for us both to continue my pregnancy. I can’t honestly remember much being in and out of consciousness until he emerged, extremely tiny and super pissed at being removed from his home. That six weeks he missed was very costly to his development. Diagnosed with Sensory Processing/Sensory Integration disorders as well as ADHD, Grant must develop his brain processes, emotional controls and sensory stimulation regulation from conscious state unlike his peers who get to develop those pieces younger and from an subconscious state. Grant is a child of extremes. He is extremely smart, an engineer who has already designed his company that will “make products that change the world and make it better”. He is also extremely challenged to develop the executive functions that his peers take for granted. As you can imagine, the chaos of the school environment is very difficult.

P.E. and art are two of the biggest hurdles for Grant in his formal schooling. Art because being creative without boundaries or rational reason is contrary to how he processes the world. P.E. because rules cannot possibly be applied with black and white accuracy especially among young kids.

We practice meditation. Grant does cognitive therapy every morning before school. He has been through occupational therapy as well as counseling to help him along his journey. We work with his school to adapt his experiences and build his coping skills, things like extra breaks, a solitary desk, snack times and supported testing. Some days it feels like progress is slow in coming or we see very little. That is until nearly the end of 5th grade.

I received a call from the school counsellor sharing that she had worked with Grant and his best friend to develop a coping skills plan for their upcoming trip together. She let me know how a conflict had come up and the two used the experience to recognize what was needed and how they would see it through. I pressed for more information on the nature of the conflict and she let me know it was during P.E. where the class was playing dodgeball.

“Are you sure? Dodgeball?” I asked.

“Yes. I am pretty sure,” she replied.

“Really sure? Grant…playing dodgeball?” I pressed.

“I can double check but I am pretty sure,” she insisted.

I arrived home later that night. The kids of the neighborhood had built a giant cardboard fort in my front yard. Interrogating my son about his day would have to wait until dinner.

Dinner came and the conversation went something like this:

“So, I heard you worked out a plan for our trip today,” I said.

To which he replied, “Yeah, I think its a good plan.”

“How did you end up in the Counselors office to work on your plan?” I probed, hoping for the full story.

“We had a fight in dodgeball. But, we worked it out,” he stated casually.

“Dodgeball, huh? It must have been P.E. today, then?

“Yeah.”

“Did you participate or were you sitting out today?”

“I participated.”

“The whole time or just through warm up?”

“The whole time.”

“Wait, what? You participated. In DODGEBALL?!” I may have sounded slightly panicked with a curious edge to my voice.

“Yeah, Mom. I do that you know. I participate in P.E. now,.” as if that was just the way it was and there was no history of any other practice.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. The child who had opted out of P.E. for three years, the class that caused him so much anxiety he would cry in the corner of the gym or lash out at the teacher out of fear; my kid was participating in DODGEBALL.

Progress happens. You find it in the most unlikely of places. For me, dodgeball will have a whole new place of reverence in my heart, a place that I will look to for hope when progress seems to stall.

Moms, find your dodgeball. We all need one.