In our house, four of four kids have been Extreme Tested (See Post on Extreme Testing) but for one, the debrief was a bit unlike the others. There were still 32 pages of information about the then 9-year-old cutie pie, but the psychologist held them tightly in her grasp and gave them only with this caveat:
“There are learning differences here but I can’t complete my evaluation without you seeing a neurologist. I am confident that there is an underlying neurological issue.”
Of course she was sweet and kind and brought tissues as always, because she is a good planner and even she has been staggered and a touch tearful by the volume of “issues” that she has uncovered in our family. She gave us a one page letter of referral with her observations to provide to the neurologist. The letter was brief, it listed the 8 basic symptomps of Cerebral Palsy (CP) and described how she saw, in mild form, all of those symptoms in our little guy. We had been to neurologists before but the classic constellation of symptoms hadn't impressed doctors accustomed to far greater severity. So we are good people and not negligent but we did get a really late and really hard-to-hear diagnosis.
Lots of people don't get their kids extreme tested because they don't want the "pathology". Lots of people get tests and follow every single recommendation and are very happy to have a diagnostic pathology for whatever situation arises. With a stack of referrals and recommendations that could keep us in waiting rooms seven days a week, what kind of pathologizers should we be?
You can probably guess that a year later I write this post and still haven’t exactly told the young child in question about the words CP. And haven’t exactly brought him to bunches of OT, PT, ST or other T’s. Because I am terrified that he will feel suddenly massively different. That he will lose his classic confidence and humor and his incurably cheerful disposition. That he will feel like a diagnosis or a medical test and not like a plain ol kid. He is who he is and to his mind, he's just a regular guy with an unusual walk. Medical literature doesn't indicate that there would be a vast improvement with the imposition of eternal waiting room time and so I have opted, and perhaps you may argue, wimped out, in favor of Plan B.
I have wimped for Plan B because any plan - basking in pathology or ignoring it altogether - brings risks and damages. And Plan B is sort of a middle ground. Plan B includes piano and violin lessons instead of Occupational Therapy. Plan B includes karate twice a week instead of Physical Therapy. And Plan B includes singing lessons instead of Speech Therapy. All things that he already was doing to some degree and that he enjoyed but with a new twist on them. Plan B is probably completely wrong in a million ways, but it is the treatment plan right now, the plan that balances pathology with just being a kid. Fine, it errs on the just being a kid side. And he is happy and thriving - which must count for something.
There is a place for pathology. There are horrible, life alternating diagnoses and treatments and urgencies that can't be ignored. There are easily addressable issues and difficult self-esteem prohibiting problems and a million important reasons that for other kids we haven't and wouldn't have made this same choice. But what we have for this particular child is not any of that. And so before rushing to a life that measures time in appointments and in waiting rooms, I am taking a deep breath and a swing at Plan B. And planning for Plan C all the while.