Reach for the Stars

Mobilizing to Reach a Goal

The school year is coming to an end. With two tiny humans who are four years apart, the end-of-year activities and stressors are very different.

For my oldest tiny human, she had to dig a little deeper this academic year.  Last summer we noticed some things that had previously come to her easily were now more of a struggle.  We started problem-solving and exploring what it could be related to.  We surrounded her with varying kinds of therapies and tutoring in effort to get to the root of the problem.

When a GSDer mobilizes, there is extra communication, teamwork, collaboration, and partnership.  Our tiny human was having a struggle and we as her family, community, and village mobilized around her.  Supporting her, challenging her, picking her up on the bad days, and celebrating with her on the good days.  Any time my tiny humans have had challenges at school, sports, church, or home, I pull together our village of key leaders in their lives to transparently and vulnerably share what’s going on, asking how can we all work together to support them in this difficult, challenging, character-building chapter in their little lives.

Each time I’ve pulled together the impacted parties, I’ve been met with support but also often surprise that I welcome collaboration among them all – because very seldom does the vision therapist get to communicate with the homeroom school teacher or the Sensei get to communicate with the priest and the list goes on.  Because I always pull everyone together, they’re able to align and organize their support of my tiny humans, and it helps usher in the solution and positive outcome faster and more efficiently.

How many times when evaluating a problem do we slow down to check that we have all the correct parties who can help us make decisions and get the shit fixed?  If you go too fast down the path of solutioning without all key stakeholders, you may end up with the wrong solution, or it may take you longer as you get everyone up to speed.  Slowing down to speeding up is key.

This principle also applied to the year that we had with our tiny human.  We needed to slow down to solidify some of the foundational skills and principles because each passing grade would get harder and harder.  We have heard other stories of families not slowing down to understand the root of the struggle only to find themselves having to work that much harder physically, and academically later on. And with an added layer of a mental struggle because the child thought there was something wrong with them that couldn’t be fixed – which was farthest from the truth!

There were a number of checkpoints throughout the year to measure and check our daughter’s progress.  My husband and I are data people and data helps tell us what’s working and where we need to pivot.  We were surprised when her team told us we were the first parents to request the data evaluations be repeated on a regular cadence.  How many times do we build out a roadmap to a solution and expect that it’s going to go according to plan?  It’s not.  You have to have regular checkpoints because you need to understand what pivots or adjustments need to be made to get to that desired solution.  If you don’t, you may find yourself to be way off course.

This last month of school has been a lot of testing and checkpoints.  She worked very hard this year.  As her parents we worked hard because we didn’t let her do it alone.  There were sacrifices made, sacrifices that we would all make over again.  Her team of teachers, therapists, and tutors all worked hard with her, with us, and with each other.  And this week we reached one of those main goals that we were striving for.  We are thrilled.  We are excited.  We are relieved.  We are celebrating.  It means that we have been doing the right things, pivots and all.  It means that we have a stronger chance of reaching that final milestone in the fall if we stay the course.  We have hope.  We have an energy boost.  We are hitting that final gear to finish the race strong, to persevere, to keep showing up because we wanted to get shit done, we got shit done, and we will continue to get shit done.