Special

Autoantonym is a word with two meanings. The word special seems to be a very positive word with pretty simple meanings. Or is it? After our visit to a doctor last week, we started talking about special. We often get the remark that Brayden is a special little guy. As his parents, we think he is above and beyond anything special and we think the same about our other two boys. We think that the little things that they do or make for us are very special. I have a special place where I store their special keepsakes. What do we do when special becomes more of a label and less of a compliment? Brayden is considered to have special needs, we have to order special equipment for him that a lot of the time is a special order, we see lots of specialists and pretty soon he will be riding a special bus to school. We have noticed when people are talking to us about Brayden and they do not know exactly what to say, they tend to say something about him being a special child. We could not agree with them more. We have found Brayden to be quite a special one with his own special needs. The word special is an autoantonym for us, depending on how it is used, sometimes it helps and sometimes it hurts.