It's been a difficult month - prom, eighteenth birthday and graduation! This is the most emotional I have been in regard to my teenage son in well at least almost eighteen years. And I have been through a lot with this young man!

As I started to write this, I'm reminded of a song my mom used to sing - "Turn Around" written by Nanci Griffith, I believe and performed by Malvina Reynolds, Harry Belafonte & Allen Greene. Okay, so, I had to look up who wrote it and sang it and found that information out on oldielyrics.com. Anyway, all I could hear in my head are the verses, "Turn around and your two, turn around and your four, turn around and your a young girl walking out of the door".

Perspective is what it takes to raise a teenager and to let them go. When this young man was placed into my arms I was told he should be institutionalized. After all he had Down Syndrome and a wide variety of health problems (Who really needed to be institutionalized I wondered).

When he was two we had already faced open heart surgery, clubbed foot release surgery and a postponed circumcision due to his other greater health concerns. I was told then that he would likely not make it to see his twelfth birthday (Who did they think they were to predict when God would call my son home I wondered).

When he was four my son had one year of pre-school under his belt and we were establishing a precedent in IEP meetings and expectations. I was being told to be realistic in my dreams as he would likely struggle to find employment that was meaningful (meaningful to who I wondered?).

Now I'm facing him walking out the door every morning to go to work. I see him come home every afternoon after school telling me about his day, his girlfriend, his sporting activities and events that he is actively involved in. I see him actively involved in church and exceeding expectations and overcoming limitations others had put on him from the day he was born. With God faithfully by our side we never took to the world's way of thinking. I'm thankful for God's miracle and the tremendous blessings!

So, in closing, it's very easy to overbear, enable and indulge children so they become overdependent, irresponsible and unaccountable. Taking balance and perspectives into account, I see my son has become independent, self-sufficient and capable of becoming a viable, living, employable involved member in our community. I trust that I have taught him values and morals. I trust that God will be with my son and my family as my son graduates and turns eighteen this weekend. I trust that, though this is an emotionally charged weekend and I see my baby getting ready to step into adulthood, that I will see him further defeat the odds and taboos of his 'handicap' and the impression the world has of today's teens in general. To keep a hold of my son is to limit him and to suggest that I don't trust I did my job as his mom and to negate the work he and I both undertook to get him to this point where I have to let him become a man rather than a young boy walking out of the door. Consider what God's Word states - Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. (Psalm 127:4). Do you know where your arrow has been aimed? Do you trust that your arrow will hit its target? If you don't and you can't, then maybe you have due cause to otherwise not let go of your child, the arrow of your youth.

Learn more about this author, M. Irene Louis.
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