Operating Instructions

If I could offer advice to new parents, I'd suggest that you ought to be wary of diagnoses.

At some point, someone used the word "apraxia" with reference to my child, and I thought this was the gospel truth. Later, I was told the word "apraxia" actually can't apply to a child so young. Certain benchmarks need to be met before the word gets assigned. Later, still, a speech therapist, while mocking diagnostic errors, went ahead and made her own diagnostic error: "It's definitely not apraxia."

She kept marching down this fantastical road, issuing declarations: "It's a language-based learning disability? It's not attention deficit. Maybe it's attention deficit?"

I have one person in my life who is a continuous source of common sense, and what she repeatedly says is: "When they're so little, you want to see progress. You don't want to see stasis, and you don't want to see regression. If there is progress, then celebrate that. So much guesswork is finessed--as if it's something other than guesswork."

I often think about humility. Recently, I watched a wonderful documentary called Burden of Proof, in which the protagonist is emphatically sure that his father has committed a murder. You witness his self-confidence --and then you see each of his conclusions turned on its head. Then an alternate hypothesis is offered--and you make your own error. You think the other option has to be The Truth--because it's so tidy, it's so compelling! ....You have just fallen into a trap.

Patience and humility are not my strengths--so I sometimes feel I'm being sent to a "personality gym," day after day, as my family approaches my son's fourth birthday. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

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