IC know for a fact that Cayden isn’t the hardest child to raise.  For the most part he is an easy going kid who right now loves “Bo on the Go”.  He
‘s watched the first season on Netflix over and over and over and over.  However, there are times when Cayden is out with his HI (habilitative interventionist) that we then realize how different it is.

We definitely love Cayden, however those occasional breaks make us realize how much goes into raising a child with special needs.  Cayden is almost 6 now, but he still requires lots of supervision.  If you leave the fridge unlocked be prepared to run out of hot dogs and Kraft cheese singles.  Or if he’s upstairs with the gate locked while you’re getting dressed you’ll find your Risk game scattered around the office.

Cayden also loves attention, he’ll tell you the same things over and over and scream to get your attention.  This can be draining when your other son has something to tell you and you’re trying to listen to both.  I think one of the hardest struggles of being a parent with a special needs kid is being fair to both.  Cayden requires more of our time which causes our other son to act out for attention.  Cayden also gets special trips to the doctors and people generally paying more attention to him. Cayden sometimes gets to do special things for therapy (swings, ball pits, climbing stairs, slides) which brother can’t always participate.

I wouldn’t trade life with Cayden for anything, he brings a lot of laughs along with him wherever he goes.  I do wish that we could figure more about him and all of his needs so we could really give him what he needs.  The paper from the doctors office really only describes 9 cases similar to Cayden.  There are probably more out there, but only 9 in the brief report we got.  So we don’t know a lot about what Cayden has, but we are constantly learning more about it.

We are continually finding out certain things are caused by his genetic disorder, we are also left continuously wondering if certain things are tied to the disorder.  I don’t want to say ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) is a new fad, but it seems to be a popular diagnosis.  We’ve had quite a few people ask if Cayden has Autism.  At times it seems that would be an easier diagnosis.  Autism is more widespread and more is known about the disorder than his 7q duplication.  

Cayden’s 7q duplication, as far as I know, doesn’t have a name besides 7q duplication.  I’m hoping that I can do more research and find out more about the duplication and some of the results of it.  In some of my research so far, there is a lot of scientific language that makes reading the reports hard.  It doesn’t say 7q causes this and that, but 7q causes (scientific language for 3 paragraphs).

This post might be more of a ramble, but its a ramble that comes from feeling inadequate to be a parent of a special needs kid.  There aren’t manuals for how to be a parent for a kid without disabilities.  Then when you have one that has disabilities it requires  totally different knowledge.  What I have learned as a parent of Cayden is, you need lots of patience, quick thinking, love, consistency (working on this one), adaptability, planning, improv, patience, patience, love, and more patience.

So here’s to an adventure to the library.  I’m usually at work, but this week is spring break.