Finding Veronica

As an adult I have tended to have disappointing health insurance.  When I gave birth to my younger daughter, Veronica, in 1990, I had no health insurance at all. I secured a midwife for $1200, a fortune for me. She was wonderful. It was an easy pregnancy, and fairly easy delivery, except that my eight-pound daughter had a ten-pound head.

She was a joy – beautiful, bald, sweet, and sunny. She had colic, but we were able to find medicine to assist with her gas. She passed her physical milestones beautifully. She rolled, crawled, and walked earlier than the charts indicated. Her language was a different issue. She did not really begin speaking until she was over 3. She would make conversational sounds, but they were almost all vowel sounds. She sang more often than she spoke.  

While I believe that there’s a wide range of normal development for children, I took her to evaluators where I was in graduate school when she was around 2 ½. They tested her hearing, language, and a range of other things. They diagnosed her with an auditory processing disorder: expressive and receptive language delay. They did well explaining what that was, but at that point there was also relatively little research on what that would mean for her life. That was around when Tom joined the party, and the experts warned us not to over-expect for her life. We might have to institutionalize her. She would be unlikely to learn to read, write, or speak like a normal person. Ever the stubborn skeptic about experts, I told myself that we’d just let Veronica decide how normal she wished to be.

Because of her diagnoses she was put in a cross-categorical pre-school program. For those unfamiliar with the jargon, that just means that children with a range of disabilities were put in the class together, rather than separating them by, say, ADHD, learning disabilities, and Down Syndrome. Her teacher was wonderful, and the other little people were delights. The first crisis point came two years later when she was going into kindergarten.

They wanted to put her in a behavior disorders/severely mentally retarded combination classroom. Tom and I politely pointed out that she had neither of those diagnoses, making it a completely inappropriate placement for her development. They replied that they did not offer a communication disorders classroom, so that was the only option. Tom took Veronica to the next school board meeting, sat her adorable tow-headed self on his shoulder, and told them all about how children like Veronica need properly trained teachers for their disabilities to maximize their potential. He also made some subtle but credible threats of legal action. The next fall she started in a communication disorders classroom with 6 kindergarten and first grade students. Somehow five other children with that diagnosis had materialized in the district!

Both years were an excellent experience. Mr. Scott was a warm and dedicated teacher. The other students were cooperative and there was no bullying. Bullying came in 2nd, 3rd, and 5th grades both from teachers and other students. During 5th grade, I’d had enough so we pulled all our children out of school and began our homeschooling project. Immediately everything got better. Where only 50% of our children had been in non-bullying classrooms where it was possible they would actually learn something, now all of them were well-treated by people who love them all day. They assisted in selecting what they learned about and were engaged all the hours of the school day. We had more time for daily Mass, music, soccer, and all the things we love doing together.  

Best of all, Veronica learned how to learn and taught us how to teach her. Without the constant stress, she realized that she needed vocabulary previewed to her prior to lessons. She developed a large box of index cards with words, definitions, practice sentences, and pictures to visualize the words.  

She did so well with her schooling that few people realize she has a disability at all now. I’ve even had people comment that I must be exaggerating the extent of her disability when she was little. Nonsense! She’s a success story in no small part thanks to the homeschooling opportunity to achieve her potential. One doesn’t need to be an expert in any area of pedagogy or subject matter to assist children to love to learn. And Veronica loves to learn. She now reads Shakespeare for fun.

I’ve often said to people who are hesitant about homeschooling that all children would be better off going to the library every two weeks and getting an arm load full of books and reading them around people who love them than going to any school I’ve entered in the 5 states in which I supervised student teachers. This is just the sad truth. The public, private, and Catholic schools in this country are overwhelmingly set up for the convenience of adults rather than the well-being of children.

After high school she went to a conservatory of music for three years. She aced music theory. She was successful at several jobs both when we lived in South Bend and once we moved to Saint Louis. She was successful as a secretary, para-educator, donut maker, and daycare worker. Her greatest success, though, came when she started her music business.

While most places were locked down during the pandemic, she began performing as a professional. She liked performing at pubs, restaurants, and other kinds of venues, but her real calling came when another local musician suggested she check out the nursing home circuit. Within six months, she was booked out for a year, and within a year was booked more times than she could sustain performing in a week. We asked Tom, who is the best manager one could imagine, to limit the gigs to 3 per week, with a possible fourth for places she really enjoys performing. It’s been a lot of performing – probably more than even most “stars” do on tours. But she’s loved it, and the nursing home residents have loved her.

She’s been on her farewell tour since Tim proposed last Thanksgiving. He’s an excellent fit for her and for our family. I am humbled by the celestial court’s tender care of my family, and how they have managed to find holy spouses despite the current insanity infecting even many Catholics. God never fails us. We just need to see the world more like he sees it to understand His ways and His timing.

Why have I spent about 1,000 words telling you all this? Because I never want a parent to feel trapped in the public-school setting by a child’s disability. If we had listened to the experts, Veronica could not have the life she now has. They would have underserved her, abused her, and consigned her to living on disability or making straws in a sheltered workshop. Instead, she has thrived and is achieving her potential as the woman God designed her to be. Tom and I love helping homeschool families especially as they transition to it. It’s a marvelous thing, and worth every sacrifice to live it.  

Floyd is also getting ready to be married this summer and his story of overcoming his dyslexia is a spectacular story for another essay. He asked me recently if I could give him a concise reason to homeschool, as his fiancé has many self-doubts about her abilities in this area. Here is my answer:

The central purpose of Catholic marriage is the creation and raising of saints for the Kingdom. We should never outsource that work. No one will love your children as much as you or care as much about whether they achieve the beatific vision.