Apraxia, Blackjack, and Decisions

None of us decide to have Apraxia. We don't decide to purposefully be speech-delayed, school-delayed, or physically-delayed.

You didn't get to decide to have a child with Apraxia either.

No one decided to go down this path.

Nor would anyone voluntarily want to.

And as much as we wish we could have decided, we simply just cannot. We can't click buttons and customize a child; what they'll be like, their strengths, etc.

If that were the case, we all would choose to have or even be the perfect human being. As you guys know, that's just not feasible.

Despite this lack of choice in the beginning, we do have one other capability. We can decide how to act, react, cope, and treat.

I was watching a Facebook video and this gentleman, diagnosed with cancer, said something interesting. He said, and I am paraphrasing, that life is a card game. We can't choose our deck, but we must learn how to play them.

With that, I thought of two things:

One, that I love a good game of Blackjack.

Two, and more importantly, I thought of you guys-the Apraxia parents, supporters, and those diagnosed.

We all have one thing in common and we've all been given this deck of cards, with one known as Apraxia.

Perhaps some of us have other unwanted cards in our decks; Sensory Processing Disorder, Autism, Down Syndrome, etc.

And at no point can we just take a card, look at it, hand it back to the dealer and say, "No thanks, I don't want this one."

If that were the case, we wouldn't lose any money at the Blackjack tables. Anyways, the point is we quickly learn to work with the cards we are given.

We make decisions, sometimes small and sometimes larger, and sometimes these decisions work out and sometimes they don't. But ultimately, we learn with the game. We start learning how to play the cards, what to do with each card, and -best of all- how to play the card that helps the table (your child and family) beat the dealer.

I strongly believe that human beings, Apraxia or not, are defined by their decisions and actions. How well they react to having a bad deck of cards and what they do to play it. Indeed some decks are far worse than others and some just don't know how to effectively act with a bad deck.

Regardless though, I firmly believe that we each have a choice in this Apraxia journey and we choose how to play the deck we are given.

We can choose to let Apraxia control and define a child.

Or, even better, we can choose to have a child control and tame Apraxia.

If this is done through speech therapy and completely eliminating any hint of the speech disorder, fine.

If that is getting extra tutoring and aid to assist in learning, fine.

If that is focusing on all other strengths and keeping a funny accent, as I know too well, then fine.

We all have the same Apraxia card, right? But given our decisions, we all find different ways to play with that card and win.