Daniel’s been doing well at school for the past couple of months, which I attribute to his developing character, his hard work, a lot of patience (from him and from those around him) and a generally tolerant attitude from those running the school. He’s losing his temper much much less. Not hitting or kicking. Not screaming with rage. Not running out of the classroom when he can’t cope any longer. He is, in fact, settling down after an enormous upheaval. We are proud of how well he is doing, without expecting that it will carry on indefinitely because that’s not what life (and development) is like. There are ups and downs and right now, we’re happy to have an up period.

His teacher, however, has chosen to describe this welcome development like this:

“He’s been so good, he’s like a different child.”

She has not said this to me ONCE (although I barely contained my rage the first time). She has said this to me a dozen times. More. She wants to know what we’re doing differently. If we’ve finally taken her oh-so-frakking-wise advice and medicated him. If we have him in some super-de-dooper therapy. Of course, we’re doing nothing differently. We’re just trusting in Daniel to grow into himself, that he will figure things out, that he will learn self-control, patience and grace. And we pour into him our trust and patience (or try to. On good days, we do). But we are not trying to fix him, because he is not broken.

And still she says to me, “He’s like a different child.”

And every single time she has said it, especially today when she said it to me while my arm was around my tired and somewhat frazzled child, I have said this:

“No, not a different child. The same child. The same exact child. All that wonderfulness you’re noticing now, that’s right there in Daniel. All that struggling he did, that’s Daniel too. The same child.”

Aren’t we all like this? Good days and bad, moments of grace and moments of struggle? Can we not let our children be thus too?

Not a different child at all. Just my child.