Going to Mass With a Special Needs Child

It's become a very rare occasion that we all get to go to Church together, but we did just that today.  We headed to the late Mass as an entire family - all seven of us...including Ronan!  Ronan hasn't been able to sit through Mass for quite some time, but we can't get him used to the routine and to the expectations unless we bring him to Church, right?  

So off to Mass we went.  This time, as a family!

Ronan lasted 22 minutes before he and I had to duck out the back door.  We were back in the car two minutes later.   

22 minutes.  It's a start.  And it's loads better than the last time Ronan tried to go to Church with us a month ago.  On that Sunday, Ronan wouldn't get out of the car.  Instead of cooperating, Ronan offered tears, tears more tears.  We had his Bag of Tricks with us as well as the promise of a fun outing afterward, but no amount of prompting or assisting helped.  Ronan wouldn't budge.  

We've been as creative as we can be trying to get Ronan out of the car, into the Church and to sit through Mass, but we seem to have to start, stop, restart, start again, take a break and start from scratch all over again.  As difficult as that is, we won't give up on taking Ronan to Church with us. We'll just try again another time.  

Keeping the faith.  Always.  

We know not to push Ronan too much.  Pushing a child with special needs to do something that they are not able to do can lead to disaster.  We never want lead Ronan to disaster.  He's faced enough of those already.  So next weekend, when it comes time to go to Sunday Mass, we'll try again.  If he's not ready, if he's not successful, if we need to start over one more time, we'll do just that.  For Ronan, we're ready to try, try, try again and to keep trying every single time after that.

xo, Cat