Karen and Matt Are Moving to the Mainland

There’s a couple topics that have been floating around in my head that I wanted to talk about but never actually sit down to write. I’m not great at goodbyes or showing large amounts of emotion. So when Karen and Matt came tonight to say goodbye to the girls (and us) it was tough and I thought this was a good time to put my thoughts down on paper.

I vividly remember the first time I met Karen. Seporah was about 7 weeks old, we’d recently moved to Hawaii. I didn’t know anyone and had no idea how to do this whole motherhood thing. We went to a church social activity and I was being really less than social. Steven had gone to chat with some guys, so it was just Seporah and me sitting and wondering who on earth was I going to talk to. Low and behold I didn’t have to go searching for anyone to talk to, Karen came over to me to talk. I thought she was really cool. Her husband was in the military and she had moved to the island 4 months prior. We got on to various topics and she said before she had lived here she had babysat autistic kids. Bing! A light bulb went off in my head. I had just got a job and I had yet to get someone to watch my child. I was a new mom and knew nothing about how to arrange childcare and despite the idea that it sounds like something that would be straight forward, it’s not. I already knew the days I’d be gone at work I’d need a babysitter from 5AM-7PM and no daycare holds those kind of hours, plus I only needed someone 2 days a week. I didn’t know who to ask to watch my baby and I didn’t know how to interview anyone anyways. This woman though, I thought she was pretty cool, she had a temple recommend, seemed relatively normal, didn’t work outside of the home and had previously babysat autistic children, surely she could handle mine for 2 days a week. The idea that my daughter could possibly be autistic did not even remotely dawn in my head. My response to her was, “Well my child’s not autistic, but do you mind babysitting her when I work?” Those were my exact words. I remember them very clearly. As the years went on and I told others how amazing this woman was, I repeated those words to other people when they asked how I found her.

Karen was amazing from the beginning. Seporah is extremely stubborn, always has been. And Karen has the patience of a saint. There were several things I could not get Seporah do that Karen could. Example, Seporah was 10 1/2 months old and she still would not feed herself anything. She brought nothing to her month, not a bottle, not cheerios, not a spoon, not toys (the upside to this, I never worried about her choking on small things since I knew she wouldn’t gum it to death like most babies). The majority of babies put everything they can into their months by 11 months (well actually most start somewhere around 2-3 months, but anyways). I could not get Seporah to feed herself at all. She would sit there in her highchair for 20 minutes with the food right in front of her crying until I fed her. This was really, really frustrating. I tried and tried to get her to do it herself with no results. Then one day Karen got her to feed herself. Karen said well I just used the tricks I used with my children that were autistic, Seporah responds well to them.

It was also quite obvious that I left my daughter with a couple that loved her as well. Seporah was 6 months old the first time she got a fever, she was at Karen and Matt’s house when it happened. I came home as quickly as I could (oh my Lord, my baby is sick and I’m not there to do something about it!) And there’s Matt tickling her to get her to laugh and lifting her high up in the air. Matt didn’t realize I could see him and was giving her one of those looks Dad’s give their own children when they’re completely enjoying themselves.

Karen taught Seporah so much over the next couple of years. Then just after Seporah’s third birthday, if you’ll remember we started going through a lot of testing trying to figure out what was wrong. We knew something was but we didn’t know what. It took about 6 weeks of going to specialist after specialist before she was diagnosed with autism by a psychologist who specialized in autistic children. We were shocked and didn’t agree with the diagnosis. No, not our daughter. She may not talk, she may throw monster temper tantrums, she may not listen, but there’s no way that’s right. In reality there was a couple things that placed us in denial besides that fact that it’s one of the stages of grief. One, we didn’t know a lot about autism. The general public’s (and our’s) mental picture of autism is low functioning non-verbal children. We couldn’t place our beautiful little girl in that profile, she didn’t fit. It just didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense to a lot of others either.

It took time and studying before I was able to accept that this was what we were working with and let’s figure out what we’re going to do. I also met a few children that were just like Seporah. One in particular that was a 9 year old boy. His mother started talking about him and I swear she was talking about Seporah.

Over the next couple of months, Seporah was enrolled in school and Steven and I worked (excuse me work) with her everyday. We work really, really hard. Every single day. Felicity honestly, we could probably stick in front of a TV 4 hours a day and she’d figure out how to live. Seporah, we have to teach every single step of every single thing. But we do and her teachers at school do now and her speech therapist does. She now speaks in mostly complete sentences and she’s significantly better behaved (just thinking about her massive hour long temper tantrums, the ones she would throw 5-6 times a day, gives me headaches). She’s still developmental delayed, but most people don’t even see it because of her happy temperament.

It’s a fact that children are able to learn faster the younger they are. I truly believe a HUGE part of Seporah being able to be as high functioning as she is, is because of having Karen in her life pretty much from the time she was born. Karen had a set of skills to be able to teach Seporah things that I could not (most of them coming as second nature to her). I also truly believe that the Lord brought her in our life, that it wasn’t just a coincidence. The home we live in right now was the very first one we were shown. I walked in and thought this is the one. Of course, I also completely second guessed myself as no one buys the first one they look at. We looked at dozens more before saying, nope that’s the one. Had we not bought the home we’re in, Karen would not have been there and I’m not sure how Seporah would be now. After Seporah was diagnosed I prayed a lot, but really my prayers were answer 3 years before I even uttered them. I had someone batting for us before I even knew we were in a game.