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It’s been more than one mom who I’ve talked to about it. I recognize the furtive look in their eyes, the zealous advocacy–of a different kind than mine, I think. He doesn’t need the stigma, they’ve told me. Do you know what teachers think of kids with ADHD?

Actually, I do.

I recall vividly the very night someone suggested my son might have ADHD. I remember the day, too, when his teachers suggested there might be something wrong. And while a diagnosis was scary? From the place where I stand–the opposite is scarier.

Should I get a diagnosis?

Psychologists will tell you diagnoses are double-edged swords. They open up worlds of healing; solutions. But it’s always possible a diagnosis can become a definition. A crutch. A pigeonhole, even for oneself. An excuse.

But perhaps I should tell you about the meeting last week I had with my son and his teachers; we have one every year now. I was so delightfully surprised by all the solutions we came up with together. My heart felt as warm as a towel out of the dryer when his teacher’s face lit up over all the ways he’d matured and developed. (I wish the world had more teachers like her!)

And I may have to admit to a wee bit of sudden moisture in the corners of my eyes when I realized how far my son had come in a single year by all of the goals we’d set together, all the streamlined intention to not enable him, but to help him grow not just in spite of his disorders, but because of it.

A diagnosis flung the doors open for me to research the tar out of solutions; to apply wisdom and get the help my son needed.

I also have to concede that the meeting at school colored the conversation I had with a friend recently. Someone of a particular theological bent had told her not to speak of her child’s disorder aloud. Don’t claim it! she’d told my friend, who’s on the precipice of a potentially disheartening–but extremely helpful–diagnosis at last. Claim the promises of the Bible!

(While I am confessing, I should admit I probably didn’t do a great job concealing my expression when I heard this? So there’s that.)

So I mentally paged through the leaves of the Bible, gathering verses into a pile. I see people bringing their seizing kids or shriveled limbs to Jesus, and stating it openly. I see Sarah, chastised for acting like I too often do: I did not laugh! I see Jesus himself in a garden, with a prayer of both honesty about what he wanted, and yet a pleading prayer, opening like a flower, for God to do what God wanted. A relief map starts to swell for me in these verses, a pattern of both utter truth and utter trust; of forbidding a false self and exalting a true one.

Getting Real

Of course there’s a pattern of God covering, lifting, and making short work of shame. Weakness. Sickness. But I have yet to think of an example where first, God didn’t tell the truth. Nowhere do I see God showing us we should pretend weakness doesn’t exist.

In fact, one of my favorites is the story of the dad who comes to Jesus. (I think the guy and I might get along.) The dad’s muscled his way through some crowd, no doubt, desperate for his son who convulses and foams at the mouth. But he lays himself bare: “I believe; help my unbelief!”

The father confesses his own lack of faith. But Jesus? Jesus heals the kid anyway.

I understand, better than I wish I did, the reasons you might be avoiding the painful process of understanding just what road lies ahead of this child of yours. My pillow was wet with a lot of tears as I realized what dreams I might be laying down; what catastrophes might lay latent beneath those sweaty blond curls that smelled of my son. But diagnosis, for us, has meant a road to promise and possibility.

Be brave, parents. Search for truth about your kids, and embrace it.

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What I am (slowly) learning because of my son’s learning disorders, Part I and Part II