Reply to Any super high-achieving parents devastated by their SN child?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, I'm not as much of an uber-acheiver as you, and it doesn't sound like my pretty-dyslexic-but-otherwise-typical 4th grader has as many challenges as your child, but I wanted to tell you that I can relate.  Once he was diagnosed and I realized that his struggles will likely be lifelong, I went through a rocky emotional period.  Friends were talking about their 2nd graders reading Harry Potter, and mine could barely do See Spot Run.  Therapy really, really helped me, specifically a therapist who practices from an ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) model.  Through my work with her, I was able to figure out that because of my personality, talents, and family-of-origin stuff, I was biased to associate certain things with giving a person value (verbal ability, quick-wittedness, academic achievement, etc).  If I held onto those traits as my gold-standard, I was going to spend a long time making myself, my family, and my child miserable.  And I would miss out on all of the things that make him such a cool little human.  It's been a process, but I am learning that if I don't buy into that framework, I can really appreciate all the things that make him and this unexpected version of my life really, really amazing in ways it wouldn't have been if he had been a "typical" kid.  Also, I don't do this in every situation, but with my good friends, I've been able to share how I feel, that's it's really hard for me to hear them touting their kids' "accomplishments" when things are such a struggle for my son.  Not to shame them or shut them up, but just so they know what is going on with us. Finally (and I think this comes with therapy, and with just getting older), I am giving less and less of a shit what other people think.  Once I was able to shed my own judgements of my kiddo, the judgements of others carry less and less weight.  None of this is easy.  It's all hard, and my heart goes out to you![/quote]

If you are in the DC area, would you share the name of your therapist? 
[/quote]

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