The Art of Not Caring

I mentioned to my mom my worries that Olivia is high functioning enough to be aware that she’s different from her peers. I explained that I want her to be as high functioning as possible and yet, I wish to protect her from disappointment.

My mom gave me a little dose of reality that day.

She said, “The thing is, I don’t think Olivia is going to care that she’s different even if she knows it.”

And you know? She’s right.

Olivia, at five years old, has already perfected the art of not caring. At school, she doesn’t care what her classmates and teachers are doing. If they’re doing something that interests her, yay, she’ll participate, but don’t expect her to actually speak to any of them.

At home, if her sister or cousin are doing things that interest her, she loves to play with them, not alongside them these days but WITH them. She interacts, she takes turns, she shares and she sometimes insists on her own way. But she often cooperates and plays. But other times, she’s not at all interested in what they are doing and so she goes quietly her own way, not bothered in the least that they’re doing something that doesn’t include her.

While this is lovely in a lot of ways, in that Olivia rarely feels left out in a crowd, it can be a problem in more structured settings, like school.

At school, we need her to want to participate and we need her to want to do the work. We need her to care. And sometimes she does while other times, not so much.

So we’re working on that, even as we’re fostering her independence and confidence. I’m trying to teacher her that sometimes, such as while in school, we have to do things that aren’t interesting to us just because those are the rules. Alyssa LOVES rules, Olivia? She just doesn’t care. She never blatantly ignores rules, she just…goes her own way, passively.

Another thing that contributes to Olivia’s state of not caring is things that are hard for her. She doesn’t like to do things that are difficult. Do any of us? Not so much, right?

Writing and cutting are hard for Olivia. She doesn’t like to do these things and yet, they’re important for school. So we’re working on them this summer. We color a lot, which gives her a chance to practice color in the lines and hold the crayons properly.

Before we got O’s diagnosis of 5p-, we were seeing therapists and a chiropractor. I don’t know if the chiropractor actually helped her but she loved him so I know his treatments didn’t hurt her. She was such a happy girl when we were in his office.

I was lamenting the fact that crawling and walking were coming along slowly for O and he gave me a great example of what it was probably like for her as she learned these skills.

He told me to think back to when I first started learning to drive. How difficult it was do remember everything that had to be done, from adjusting the mirrors and seats to not overcorrecting the steering wheel, to knowing just how much pressure to put on the brake pedal.

He said that just sitting up was like that for Olivia. She had to think about contracting her stomach muscles, her legs muscles, her back. None of these movements came naturally to her, she had to learn everything. She was able to remember how to do it once she learned but it was so involved in the beginning that, as the chiropractor said, it was mentally and physically exhausting for her to just sit up, let alone crawl and walk.

And yet, here we are, five years later, and Olivia progressed from crawling to walking to running and these days she swims. She runs, she jumps. She doesn’t have to think hard about these activities, she just does them.

So I know that writing and cutting will come too, we just have to be patient with her and get her to care enough to work on it. Because it’s going to take work, we know it and she knows it, which is one of the reasons she’s fights it. The older she gets, the less she wants to work on the things that are more difficult, so the adults in her life have to continually come up with ways to make these things fun. But we continue to have amazing people on Olivia’s team and I have no doubt that together, we’ll get this girl to her fullest potential, whether she cares about that or not.