My son is amazing. A month ago he started wearing a painful scoliosis brace. This is a child that had difficulty tolerating clothing tags, had sock problems, was always hotter or colder than everyone else in the room, was bothered by bright lights and certain noises that most people could easily tune out. For the first 3 1/2 months of his life he had colic. He was hypersensitive.
We constantly had to work around leg pain, migraine pain, tummy aches, etc. He always had trouble tuning out pain.
When we were told that he would need to wear a hard plastic brace that would cut into the top of his legs if he tried to bend down to pick something up off the floor and it would make it more difficult for him to breathe and would be very hot because he would have to wear a shirt under the brace, the brace, then a shirt over it, I thought there was no way my sensitive child could do it and still learn. We saw stories on the internet of kids who could not tolerate the brace and refused to wear it and later had to have surgery. The orthotist said he saw several kids that refused to wear the brace.
But he also told my son that it was possible to learn to tolerate pain and that he thought he could do it, even though he had seen kids who couldn't. He didn't lie to my son about the pain that would be involved. He didn't talk down to my son or try to sugarcoat the information he was giving him. He even told him there was no guarantee that bracing would work, just that at this time it was his best chance of avoiding surgery.
Saturday, my son was able to do a musical theater audition while in the brace. Later that day, he did a lot of walking at the science museum and tried some activities that tested his balance and his reaction time and somehow scored better than my husband and I did. He has motor dyspraxia and we don't. How is this even possible? Yesterday he asked to do math while in the brace because he knows if he finishes the book he is in now he can start the Life of Fred algebra book and he wants to do this.
He still can't do math when he has a migraine but neither can I. At least he doesn't have these every day.
Things are getting better.
