Life lesson | Lessons from my daughter

A month ago, I shared the Cri du chat awareness video with Emily’s resource teacher.

Emily appears in this video 4 times which, to her, is the equivalent of being a movie star!

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Since she was little, I have allowed Emily to make her own decisions. I have allowed her to fall, to get hurt sometimes, to taste vinegar and lemon juice….. but most importantly, I have allowed her to learn how to make a decision!

Within a couple of days of us having the awareness video, she told me she wanted to present it to her class….

Wow!!!

I didn’t see that one coming.

Emily knows she has a rare syndrome, she knows she is different and she knows that different is awesome because normal is boring!!! 🙂

Sometimes, she is sad about being different… she wants friends and a boyfriend but quickly she’s back being her happy self…

Emily, to my knowledge, has never talked about her syndrome at school.

Where we live, kids with special needs are included in regular class. This means Emily is in a regular 8th grade class… the kids obviously know she is different but I have no idea if they know how much she’s achieved in her life.

Around the same time as Emily decided she wanted to share the video with her class, she was assigned an ELA (English Language Art) project and decided to make it about her syndrome. She decided to make a brochure about the 2013 conference in New York City. We printed all the materials that was available to us and sent it to school with her. She worked with her EA (Educational Assistant) on building a brochure.

Yesterday, there was a note in Emily’s communication book, her presentation date is June 12th 8:30am and she will introduce the awareness video before talking about her diagnosis and her upcoming trip to NYC, including the conference!

I am so nervous right now!

I will be there, I will try to the best of my abilities to make a video of Emily standing in front of her classmates and talk about herself, her syndrome, her reality!!!

I will be there for her if she gets questions that she can’t handle… I will be there for her regardless of how it goes…

Remember my public speaking post…..? How scared I was…. this tops it! This is beyond anything I ever though I would see one day! Between now and June 12th at 8:30am… I have to reach into my drama class experience once again and act as if everything is fine…. as if I am not nervous about this new adventure…

I am not afraid that she will not do well, I am worried about her classmates reactions…

Please send positive energy our way so those 14 year old react like friends to Emily’s efforts and achievements…

Would let your child open up like that to their classmates?

We all do it some point in our life…. We look at someone and make a comment (preferably in our head….)…

Over the last month, it happened twice that a comment about me was made directly to me.

One day, I will talk about how people look at Emily but today’s post is about me!

1st… early May, I was speaking with a colleague and for the first time I got talking with him about Emily, her syndrome and our struggles over the year. At some point in the conversation, I was told that I looked too young to have a teenage daughter. That I look like a young successful professional, that it looks as if life treated me well, as if my life was easy….

Something like that…. maybe not to the dot but the overall feeling was that I looked like someone who has had an easy life!

….

Once again, last week… a good friend asked me how it is that I don’t age? In looking at pictures in my blog, she doesn’t feel like I have aged in the last 15 years.

My reply to her was “a life of no stress will do that to you”

LMFAO!!!

We have had so much stress in our life that my mother-in-law use to tease us by asking if we would be able to function without the stress…

Quite frankly, I am not sure!

For friends or colleagues to notice that my skin and general appearance doesn’t show my age…. it’s flattering!

For those wondering how it is possible….. I use cream on my face, good cream and I have used cream since my early 20’s….. ok…. 🙂 that’s sounds ridiculous even to me! I don’t feel I look like I did 15 years ago, in my mind, I feel my almost 40 years old…

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I truly don’t believe it’s just the cream…

I believe it goes back to those phone calls that changed my perspectives on life.

I decided years ago that I would be happy, that regardless of what life was throwing at me, I was going to be happy!!!!

I spend time with my daughter, I love just hanging out with her. She is really funny and witty! I sing my head off with her in the car (I know all the Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen and others teen idol’s songs!!!), we dance in the kitchen, we cuddle, we watch tv and yes, I watched all the little kids show. Now we are more at the pre-teen shows but she also likes the Big Bang Theory….. I love the BBT. It allowed me to have some pretty interesting conversation with her…. “So what do you think Howard means when he says…..” Considering she is a little girl and a teenager all at once, we need to have those conversations…

On top of deciding every single day that I will be happy, I decided to not make a big deal out of little things… this helps too!

Pick your battles….. is it really that important? if it’s not, let it go!

And, don’t go to bed upset… never…

Whatever happened, whatever made you upset… if the person you are upset with doesn’t make it through the night, how will you feel? If those last words you exchanged were your last words… could you live with that?

It seems a little drastic to think that way but it’s really simple. You don’t have to tell that person that you are ok with whatever happened… you don’t have to forgive and forget before you are ready but you can certainly tell them that you are hurt, that you disagree but that you still love/like them. That you need time to adjust to the situation but that you still care about them…

So, here are my secrets for looking so young (which I don’t believe I really do…..)

1. Use good cream on your face! Don’t forget your eyes…

2. Be happy! Play like a kid! Spend time with your kids, not just along side them. Laugh with them

3. Pick your battle, if it’s not really important, let it go! Who really cares about the dishes? I’ll take a cuddle anytime over doing the dishes… The dishes will be there tomorrow but the cuddle might not!

4. Never go to bed upset… Never allow your last words to someone be something you might regret.

And just for the fun of it…………….. don’t take yourself to seriously!

Is there anything else you think I should add to my list?