I'm trying really hard not to let my emotions get the better of me but I'm having a really hard time because it involves my son. A little background here… My son had developmental problems that we discovered when he was about a year old. He wasn't doing the things those other children his age did. At first his doctor told us not to be concerned, children develop differently one from the other. By the time he should have been developing more complex language skills and still wasn't on par for his age we were concerned and told our pediatrician who merely told us to read to him more. OK, no problem. We read to him every night. Stories, poems, even had a sesame street dictionary that we'd read him word and their definitions out of to try and increase his vocabulary. This did help but there were still other things that just weren't right. The first instinct is to find out what might be causing the problem because if you know what caused it then you might find how to correct it. The poor kid had testing done from a CAT scan to blood tests for fragile X syndrome and lead poisoning. There were no answers, there was just him needing me to do everything I could to help him in a world that was going to be even more difficult for him than it was for most other kids. At the age of 3 we had him in a special school geared to helping children with development delays where I was told my son was developmentally handicapped. He'd never learn past a certain age. For those who don't know me you won't know that the last thing anyone wants to tell me is that something can't be done or to give up. I don't know how to when it really matters most. So I worked with my son, I worked with the schools and by the time he was in third grade his 'academic classification' had been changed from being developmentally handicapped to having learning delays. Doesn't sound like much but that meant that he went from never being expected to function past a relatively young age to being just enough behind others his age to need some extra assistance to accomplish the same as they could. I never stopped pushing him… In a lot of ways my expectations made our relationship harder because I knew my son and knew that he could do whatever he wanted to do as long as he wanted to enough. Needless to say this meant that he and I clashed a lot during his teen age years but the result was that by the time he got to high school he only had to have assistance in math. He was mainstreamed in all other classes and doing better than just passing grades. The one thing that we learned was that he may take a bit longer to catch on but once he gets it he snowballs and catches up very quickly. Throw in the fact that he also inherited my visual disorder as well as being very nearsighted so he will probably never be able to drive unless some medical miracle should occur; the kid is not going to ever have it easy. He'll always have to work harder to do what others take for granted.
He graduated from high school but because I'd spent those years at home working with him I didn't have a career of my own so there was no money for him to further his education and because of the prior assessments any state or educational agency refused to offer assistance other than helping to find a menial job. It makes me sick how these agencies want to define a person's ability that has no real idea what that person really is. It seems they'd prefer to error on the side of negativity because it takes the least amount of effort on their part. Anyway, he didn't need their help to find a job where they felt he'd need a babysitter just to be able to learn it; he found his own and did as he was told to learn what was required to do the job on his own.
Now this is where my heartache comes in. Knowing all that this young man has battled in his life, how far he's come, how much he's accomplished and how oh so proud of him that I am I have to watch him today deal with something that he shouldn't have had to. That job he got for himself was at Wal-Mart, the great retail demon God. He had worked there for over a year, never missed but one day in all that time and it was a blizzard that caused that, had gotten employee of the month, bonus' and such for his dedication to his job and those he worked with as well as customers had nothing ever but praise to offer about him. This kid got up this morning and went to work as usual. Was sitting in the break room BEFORE his shift and while watching something on the television swore once over something that he'd seen. He wasn't even clocked in yet so he was still on his own time in a room where he'd been alone until the manager had walked in but since the manager heard him swear, told him there was a zero tolerance for it and terminated him right then and there.
The thing is that I think I'm more upset about it than my son is. Since he no longer had to work today he spent it out looking for another job and knowing him he will do the same till he finds another. Of course the assistant manager pleaded with him to come back in three months and reapply and she'd push for him to be rehired. Shouldn't she have pushed for him to be kept? In my head I know the manager's obvious penance for snap judgment will not serve him well in life and will bite him in the ass more than once as consequence for his choices but in a time when it's a rare few young people, (and even those who are older for that matter) who have a high work ethic; should it be ok to disregard that over such a insignificant and benign incident? Perhaps its vindictive of me to hope that they are made plainly aware and it is crystal clear in the most painful of ways just how valuable a job my son did for them.It's not that I imagined he'd have a future at Wal-Mart, I want more for him than that, and it's the principle of it. I do admit that in this economy and especially in our already desperate job market I worry about his finding another job. At the age now of 22 he needs something that will have benefits soon. As of right now he's still covered under ours but as I've always done with him I have to weigh out the goals. And of course it'd be left to me to figure it out because my husband will have to be pushed to even make the effort of participating in the process. You know when I could more easily rely on myself to get things done his non-involvement could be overlooked because at least one of us was getting things done. Now that I have no choice but to ask for his help more and he still looks at me like a deer caught in head lights my patience with him wears VERY thin. At any rate, this is about my son… I'm sure something will turn up but for now I can't shake two emotions. Anger for the situation and guilt for somehow not provided him more opportunity than he currently has. Somehow even after 22 years of not knowing why he has the problems that he does I still wonder was it something I did or could have prevented? And then I wonder if life will ever just be easy ever. I am so tired of it being so hard so much of the time.
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