You Can’t Rush Growth

Ecclesiastes 3:1 NLT “For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.”

Our family moved into our new construction house 9.5 weeks ago. Little by little we are slowly getting more settled. A big part of the moving in process has been getting grass to grow around the house. 

(This is what our front yard looked like at the end of April as Nathan aerated and seeded it.)

With all of the crazy amount of rainfall this spring, the space around our house was kind of a muddy mess. Our lower field even flooded.

Thankfully one of Nathan’s passions is lawn care. Despite the frequent downpours, he didn’t give up on getting grass to grow this spring. He methodically aerated, planted, and watered the new grass seedlings and now we get to experience the fruit of his labor. 

(Just 6 weeks later-we have grass in the front yard!)

With most of our focus being dedicated to getting the yard going, we recognized that we didn’t have the capacity to plant many flowers this season.  So, I went to a local nursery with my mom, sister, and niece and picked out just a few potted flowers to add some color to the front porch without making us feel overwhelmed with keeping too many plants alive. 

After Nathan got the grass growing, he decided it was time to pick up some fertilizer for the flowers. Day after day, we kept coming out to check on the flowers and water them. Instead of beginning to thrive, this one plant seemed to keep declining. 

That’s when we realized that the Miracle Grow container that we only bought a few days ago was completely empty. Later when we looked for it again, we found it was missing from the hose attachment. After watching Nathan diligently care for the grass, one of our children decided that he wanted to help spray the magic liquid, too. So, without us realizing what he was doing, he decided to turn on the water hose and drench one of the plants with Miracle Grow. I’m sure in his young mind that he thought if a little bit of Miracle Grow is a good thing, then won’t it be even better to completely cover the flowers with Miracle Grow?! 

Well it turns out that a little bit of Miracle Grow can create colorful, luscious petals, but too much Miracle Grow can cause a plant to shrivel up. Although I am sad that this plant might not be able to pull through it after all, I can’t help but smile as I think through what might have motivated our son to over water and fertilize the plant and my own similar misconceptions with “more is better.” 

More Isn’t Always Better

When we first started our journey into sensory processing and neurodiversity, I looked for help anywhere I could. I read books, watched webinars, interviewed parents and medical experts, and bought all sorts of tools for integrating a sensory diet into our family’s everyday lives. We received deliveries a few times a week from Amazon with resources like a weighted blanket, visual hourglass timer, sensory wiggle board, and an indoor swing just to name a few.  My husband now jokes that while I was in my “sensory learning” era, we could have single-handedly kept Amazon in business with all of the tools that promised to be the “solution” that we were hoping for. (Local friends, no need to shop on Amazon. If you are looking for something sensory related, we probably have it in our basement, and you can borrow it!)

Neurodiversity Doesn’t Have a Miracle Grow Option

Now that we are four years into this journey, I continue to learn you can’t rush growth. There isn’t a “miracle grow” for neurodiversity. Rewiring our sensory processing systems takes time. No matter how the latest tool or technique promises to magically cure your child’s challenges, it can take years or even their lifetimes to learn how their brains and bodies process their surroundings and regulate their big emotions. I don’t write this to discourage families from trying out new tools and techniques. I write this more as an encouragement to parents to not feel like a failure if your child isn’t experiencing big changes quickly.

As we needed to teach our son to scale back on the Miracle Grow and prune back the dead places on the hanging basket, it’s important to reflect where you are on your own neurodiverse parenting journey.

• Which tools and techniques are beneficial? 
• Which tools and techniques might be pruned away?

As much as I thought weighted blankets and weighted stuffed animals might be the best tools that could help our child regulate, these are not his go to tools anymore. We have also packed away his headphones and squishy seat cushion, because he no longer needed them either.

(We haven’t given up on this plant yet. I pruned away the worst places and I’m hoping through pruning we can make space for new growth.) 

What we are continuing to make space for instead are books (especially graphic novels), “infinite snuggles” with Mama, and Lego creations. Our sweet boy treasures his weekly (sometimes more than once a week) trips to the library for storytime and selecting new books to read together. Watching him blossom as a reader has been one of the biggest blessings in my life as his mom. Although we might process our world differently, we both share a passion for reading. 

We are also learning as our son’s sensory system rewires itself, he gravitates toward long stretches of time snuggled up with Mom on the front porch swing reading many chapters at a time of his favorite books. He often says, “Mom, will you please read one more chapter? I will give you infinite snuggles if you read one more chapter!” 

(The author of this Dogman book in the photo is Dav Pilkey. He is an excellent role model for neurodiverse kids, because he has neurodiversities himself and is a prolific author and illustrator. He shows kids how they can see their neurodiversities as a gift instead of a hindrance.)

His other passion is to spread out in the bonus room floor building legos and creating his own stories about the Lego figures and their adventures. I can see how his love for storytelling is coming alive through his imaginative play.

Parents, family members, and teachers of neurodiverse children, I want to encourage you to find peace and purpose in the slow growth of your neurodiverse children. There won’t be a “one size fits all” sensory diet that will quickly and magically make everything inside their bodies connect. What works for one neurodiverse child may not work for the next, and I am learning, that’s to be expected. Parenting and teaching neurodiverse children has sparked within me a passion for getting to know each child individually and learning what helps them regulate their emotions and recognize their own passions and creativity. 

Like our child tried to douse the plant with Miracle Grow, overdoing sensory diets into your child’s daily life probably won’t speed up the process. However, when you look back, if you are like me, you will see such beautiful ways of how you slowly grew right alongside your child as you experimented with how their brains and bodies work best.