God Keeps Meeting Our Needs - Part II

Part two of this blog post comes at a perfect time because there is a little girl in China who is weighing heavily on my heart. This little girl has almost the exact same special needs as Susu and she is the same age as well. I will share more about this little girl in my next post but for now I want to share how God has helped us meet Susu’s biggest special need in an unexpected way.

When we adopted Susu at four years old, she came to us with the diagnosis of "intelligence barrier" and maldevelopment of her left eye. She was very delayed when we adopted her. Just to give some examples, at four years old Susu had no idea how to hold or use a crayon or pencil. She was not able to fit puzzle pieces into a wooden puzzle meant for a 2 year old. She didn’t know how to play with toys and she would spend her time sitting in a chair if we let her. I had to teach her how to play with toys. The first couple years home, Susu made a lot of progress but it took so much work on both her and my part. She had great difficulty with short term memory and any kind of analytical learning, especially number concepts. Learning to write her letters was incredibly challenging and I thought she might never learn to write. It took months and months of repetition before she learned her colors. I would love to say that I was patient all the time but I wasn’t and teaching Susu was just plain hard.

About a year ago, a friend of mine recommended an Indian Ayurvedic herb called Bacopa Monnieri (Brahmi) for Susu. There have been a handful of scientific studies on this herb in Europe and how it can help children improve their memory and cognitive functioning. I was very skeptical because I have tried a number of herbs over the years with typically mild or mixed results. Did I really think an herb that hardly anyone has heard of was going to help my daughter’s cognitive issues. The answer was no but it was an inexpensive herb with no known side effects so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try it. Well, within a month of starting to use this herb, we were seeing big changes in Susu. This herb was truly an answer to our prayers. Susu took off in all academic areas, reading, writing, short term memory, and her number skills improved dramatically as well. As a comparison, before taking the herb it might take me teaching Susu something 30-60 times before she really got it. I am not exaggerating here. Now with the herb she is able to grasp most things after a couple repeat lessons and sometimes right away.

I know this sounds like a miracle. It has been for our family. I was having such a hard time homeschooling Susu before this herb because it took extreme patience and a lot of time to teach her anything. I knew public school was not the answer because they would not have the resources to provide Susu with the one-on-one help she needed most of the day. I have worked in special education classrooms in several schools as a one-on-one tutor so I have a good idea of the help available to struggling students. Susu was also highly distractible and had a great deal of trouble concentrating. I had to constantly redirect her to pay attention to what she was doing.

This last year of homeschooling Susu has really been a joy to me on most days. Susu still often needs a bit more help than other children her age but the difference between a couple repetitions to understand most things versus 40 or more is like night and day.

Before God led us to this herb, I thought there were really only two big lessons I needed to learn from this experience. One lesson was how to have more patience with my children and the second was learning to accept my children whether or not they ever met developmental or academic milestones. These were important lessons but I never expected such a transformation in my daughter and it has been an incredible gift to both of us. I have learned that God can provide solutions to our problems that are beyond anything we might imagine.

Susu is now seven years old and getting ready to finish up 1^st grade. She is academically on target in many areas. She is doing really well at reading, writing, and spelling. She is about ½ year behind in Math. She amazes me! I have to add that if Susu was not doing so well, I never would have considered adopting another child let alone two.

I will include some of Susu’s current school work below just to give concrete examples of how far she has come in three and a half years. We would love and value Susu whether or not she ever learned to read, write, or do addition because Susu’s worth is not based on how she performs compared to other kids her age. It is a wonderful gift for Susu that she does not have to work so very hard to learn basic concepts anymore and I thank God for that often. If anyone reading this post would like more information on the herb that has helped Susu and where to buy it, feel free to leave a comment with your email address.

Reading

Copywork and Drawing Lesson

Spelling

Math