Our youngest son at the age of two was reading but not talking in more than two to three word phrases. As we struggled to get a grasp on how and why this was taking place, I had asked God in my prayer time to reveal to me what might be going on. I had the thought of giftedness or autism come across my mind. I believe that God placed those thoughts in my mind to provoke me to begin to research to find an answer to my question.
I started researching giftedness first because some of things that he was doing at the time were quite remarkable, and quite frankly I found many things that I could relate to concerning what was going on with our son. But also, if I am being honest, I had a picture in my mind of what Autism was, and to me he didn’t match it. He was progressing in the area of reading and we discovered that there were things that he could do that we had not taught him. For instance, we could tell him to find a word in the dictionary and he would methodically go through the dictionary using alphabetical order until he found the word that we gave him.
In another instance, we had bought him some placemats where some had numbers on them all the way up to 100 in English and Spanish and was color-coded, and some that had money on them or geometric shapes. We knew that he would just sit and study them, but we discovered one day that he had taught himself how to count all the way to 100 in English and Spanish. He also had all the shapes and types of money memorized as well. This is when we realized that though he wasn’t able to respond to us always by using words, he was definitely visually learning and absorbing just taking everything in. I wondered, how is this even possible that he was teaching himself to do things, but struggled in other areas of development that most of us as parents take for granted?
I thought that this was unusual but found in researching giftedness, that it is not as uncommon as you would think. They even had a name for it. Asynchronous development. In a nutshell, it is where the various stages of development for a child are not in sync. A light bulb went off. This is what is surely going on with our son! I began to think of what I could do to help bring the places of development that were out of sync up to speed with the ones that were in sync.
I began to use everything at my disposal. I enrolled him in a program called Kindermusik. I enrolled him at Gymboree. Gymboree and Kindermusik were meant to encourage him to be social and play with other kids because he preferred to play alone. I bought Baby Einstein and Leapfrog videos for him to watch, and I enrolled him in the Parents-As-Teachers program in our school district. He would sit for hours watching those videos wanting to watch them over and over again, but nonetheless he didn’t really start speaking much until he was three years old.
When he turned three years old he did reach the point of having conversations and using full sentences. I began to sit down with him and speak to him about and read to him from the Bible. Even though he was still small, I believed that the word of God could help. I noticed that he would listen intently; and he responded very well to me speaking to him about what the Bible said concerning his behaviors. I think partly because he could read it himself and partly because he had developed a reverence for God based on how I spoke of Him.
Though the programs he was enrolled in did have some impact, it wasn’t moving the needle as fast as we would have liked. One resource that I had not considered initially was the word of God. Why is it that when all else fails, then we consider enlisting God’s help instead of trying God’s way first?
His behaviors were not improving either. He would tantrum and sneak food out of the kitchen. At night when it was time to go to bed, he would constantly get out of the bed unless I sat next to his bed and patted him on the back until he fell asleep. This would happen night after night with him making noises or crying and hitting his head against the wall until he wore himself out. Sometimes it took up to two hours just to get him to sleep at night. It was exhausting.
At the age of four, we enrolled him in pre-school. He seemed to enjoy school, however, his behaviors had only gotten worse. He would do things like push other kids down for no reason or knock the tray of lunches out of the teacher’s hand to where she would have to go prepare them all over again. The director, however, was so enamored with the fact that he could read and do other things that were way above what he should be doing at his age that she gave him special treatment. She thought by having him sit next to her all day in her office and by making him her special helper that that would keep him out of trouble. But really, it only made him act out more so that he could keep being treated special.
One day, I received a call from the owner of the daycare where he was attending and she stated that his behaviors were too difficult to handle at the current facility. She suggested that we try to move him to another facility that they had where she could have more control over him. She felt that it would be a better environment for him. The suggestion sounded okay because it was actually closer to our home than the current facility he was attending, but it came with a caveat. If they could not get his behaviors under control at that facility, then he would no longer be able to attend at all.
We almost went into panic mode because we both had to work, but I heard God speak to me about writing a prayer for him to pray every night before he went to bed that spoke to the areas of where he needed help. He gave me the scriptures to use to help with this. This is the prayer that I wrote for our son that was God inspired.
I am blessed as blessed can be(Deuteronomy 28:3)
Because God’s Spirit lives in me
(I Peter 1:15)
I am inherited from God above
(Psalm 127:3)
I always walk in light and love
(I John 1:7, I John 4:8)
I am the fruit of all that’s good
(Galatians 5:22)
I treat my neighbor as I should
(Leviticus 19:18)
The lord is my God, He will increase
(Elias,Joseph)
My Gentleness, meekness, joy, and Peace
(Galatians 5:22-23)
We began reciting this prayer every night before he went to bed. It became not only a prayer , but a confession. It helped him at school and at home. Did it completely change his behaviors? No, but it helped tremendously. A simple prayer that encompassed the word of God and the meaning of his names, that he would speak out of his own mouth declaring that he would become. Do you know how powerful that is?
What resource has God given you today that can help your child tremendously in an area where they need help? Is there a scripture that you can begin to have your child recite to help them? How about, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right”? Ephesians 6:1 KJV or “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men do to you, do you even so to them: for this is the law of the prophets”? Matthew 7:12 KJV.
God has everything we need to deal with any problem we face. We only need to turn to Him and ask for help. Jesus is waiting with open arms for you to come to Him today instead of resulting to worldly solutions for your problems. Let Him help you.
I pray this has encouraged you in some way and increased your faith in what God can do.
Yours in Christ,
Nikki