As with many children, especially toddlers, there was a time when our girls were young when they were far more stubborn than flexible. About pretty much anything. And everything. I took this all in stride because I remembered a story my mom liked to tell about one of my nephews who had accompanied her and my dad to the airport to bid my mom’s best friend goodbye as she headed back to Texas.
Apparently, according to the story, my nephew asked if he could have a banana and my mom was happy to indulge his request. Except that she broke the banana in half, offering one half to my nephew and the other half to her best friend. As the story goes, my nephew dissolved into tears and crying at levels equal to many, many decibels.
Toddlers (or young children) and flexibility can at times be one of the greatest oxymorons.
When one is parenting neurodivergent kids, that inflexibility and rigidity can seem almost insurmountable at times. We had more than our fair share of broken banana moments with our girls as they moved through those younger years. We did our best to walk alongside them and hold space for those intense, big feelings and relied on a team that included Occupational Therapists (OTs) and Counselors to help them, and us, create toolboxes with the means to help with emotional regulation, with expressing needs and requests in simple ways when overwhelmed, and with flexibility.
These days, there are still moments (from all of us) involving the stubborn digging in of heels and rigidity, but these two teenagers have come a long, long way in flexing their flexibility muscles. One might even say they now put the flex in flexibility. And I love the ways those moments take shape and provide glimpses of growth in each of them in various ways.
Just today, I loved watching each of them employ a combination of resilience and flexible thinking in specific ways, each of these combos producing different but similar benefits. As tends to be her way, my oldest flexed her flexibility as a way to provide me some breathing room this evening. I’d forgotten that I was supposed to make waffles this evening because there were not enough for both her and her sister to have them for dinner. On a whim earlier in the day, I decided to make a drive to the library this afternoon so the three of us could enjoy a drive and also spend time searching through the stacks for potential reads. As I realized a little after 6 p.m., when dinner should have already been underway, that I had forgotten I needed to make waffles from scratch, my 17 year old said she could eat something else.
In this moment, her flexibility was an incredible gift to me.
In a different but equally satisfying way, my youngest also exercised some flexible thinking that caused me to smile a bit in response. As she sat eating the last of the waffles, I mentioned I’d wanted to order her the next graphic novel in one of her favorite series, but that my efforts had been unsuccessful because that specific book is on backorder. As I was about to consider alternatives, she let me know that it is still a Webtoon and she could easily read that particular volume on their website. It wasn’t just her words, but her smile that touched my heart as she shrugged off not being able to add that book to her growing collection. When I told her I’d go ahead and order the next one in the series, her smile widened. Sometimes flexibility provides us a gift we don’t expect or see coming.
In that moment, her flexibility was a gift both to me and for her.
These kinds of moments remind me of how remarkable these two young women truly are as I glimpse not only who they used to be but who they are becoming. I think if each of us is honest, flexibility doesn’t necessarily come easily or naturally for any of us. When it comes down to it, we tend to want what we want. And that’s why I am delighted to celebrate these kinds of moments. As neurodivergent teens, our girls don’t feel like they’re like their peers and, honestly, these are the moments that show me just how different—in all of the best ways—they are from their peers and the average person. These two amazing young women are definitely putting the flex in flexibility and I love that about them.