Notes from Becker's "a good and perfect gift"

This rainy week, I read (and loved!) Amy Julia Becker's memoir a good and perfect gift: Faith, Expectations and a Little Girl Named Penny (Bethany House, 2011). Becker writes honestly and poignantly about the life-altering experience of first time motherhood, made more complex when just after delivery, she learns her newborn, Penny, has Down syndrome.

Becker's reflections on the diagnosis and on parenting a child with special needs were eye-opening to me, even though I spend lots of time interacting with people with special needs and their families! For parents, the experience of having a child with special needs is surely as unique as their individual children; however, I'm so grateful for the general insight I gained from reading Becker's sensitive, honest portrayal of parenting her daughter. I think it brought me a shade closer to understanding, a deeper empathy and heightened awareness of parenting in general and specifically of children with special needs.

Two of my favorite points from Becker's text:

• "Can she [Penny] live a full life without ever solving a quadratic equation? Without ever reading Dostoyevsky? I'm pretty sure she can. Can I live a full life without learning to cherish and welcome those in this world who are different from me? I'm pretty sure I can't." (123)
• I attended a conference where we heard a child development specialist speak about "responsive parenting." He said most parents of kids with disabilities focused on their child's weaknesses. Instead we should try to identify Penny's strengths and help her grow into those strengths... [this way] we would recognize how capable she really was." (158)

In an identifiable voice, Becker also discusses the very nature of special needs diagnoses and how damaging 'scientific' understanding of limitations imposed by diagnoses can be. A talented narrator, Becker lets the reader get to know her wonderful, charming, intelligent daughter so personally that it breaks preconceptions about Down syndrome, doing for the reader on the page what working with individuals with special needs has done for me in person.

It's such a strange, humbling feeling to realize that one has imposed limits on someone because of preconceived notions related to a disability: one feels so foolish but also so very pleasantly surprised. I have experienced this as a teacher for people with special needs (and am glad to say it has broadened my heart, mind and awareness!). Becker presents this experience (of being pleasantly surprised and learning from it!) from the perspective of a parent, and it's a viewpoint so personal and intimate that one feels honored to be included as a reader.

Fair warning, Amy Julia Becker writes from a decidedly Christian perspective (and Bethany House is a Christian publisher). However, while Becker's faith is on every page, I never found it stifling or overbearing, despite being of a more "generic" spiritual persuasion myself at this time. Becker is down-to-earth and comfortable in her spirituality: it is central to her life and she shares it as open-heartedly as she does her experience of being Penny's mom. I have a feeling she would say the two are inseparable. 

A wonderful read, especially for anyone who loves, teaches or cares for a person with special needs and abilities!