Children, at times, can be a handful.
Special needs children, like the pair single mom Lisa Oraniuk is raising, can overwhelm.
The 37-year-old Stratford mother finds the daily challenge of caring for her six-year-old daughter Sierra and her nine-year-old son Morgan to be taxing on many levels — from financial to emotional.
Morgan, who was diagnosed with autism at age two, is a beautiful boy prone to not-so-pretty moods.
After three “excellent years of schooling,’’ Morgan became increasingly violent and aggressive, said Oraniuk.
Outbursts and meltdowns grew common.
“Well, every day is unpredictable simply for the fact we don’t know how Morgan is going to wake up,’’ she said.
“He could wake up in a good mood and things could go smooth ... a bad day with Morgan is him yelling, him telling me that I can’t talk ... it’s him refusing to get dressed.’’
Sierra, meanwhile, is very small for her age, uses a wheelchair for mobility and has difficulty communicating.
Always happy and smiling, the young girl has mild seizures controlled with medication.
Both Sierra and her brother share a form of Holoprosencephaly — a disorder caused by the failure of the embryonic forebrain to sufficiently divide into the double lobes of the cerebral hemispheres.
Costs Oraniuk incurs to tend to the special needs of her two children — everything from special materials, trips to the IWK in Halifax and to the Janeway Children’s Hospital in Newfoundland, and medication — are more than she can bear.
She works full-time as a legal assistant for lawyer Brendan Hubley, who she praises as “a great boss who understands my home situation and is very flexible to my needs.’’
For the past nine years, Oraniuk has been living with her parents to help make ends meet. She yearns for greater independence, but for now the cards seem stacked against her.
Still, her priority remains to provide the best care possible for her two children and to do all she can to allow them to develop to their full potential.
The annual Delmar Currie Memorial Benefit Golf Tournament will provide Oraniuk with some much welcome financial assistance this year.
She is hopeful money raised from the Sept. 19 tournament at Glen Afton Golf Club in Nine Mile Creek will allow her to take Morgan to a behavioural institute in Toronto to get a strategy developed so she can deal more successfully with her son.
She says the key is “getting Morgan to somewhere where he can get help ... I don’t care how much it (tournament) raises. Every little bit helps.’’
The tournament is a two-person team best ball, scramble format. Entry costs $90 per team for non-members and $60 per team for members.
Entry deadline is Sept. 15. To enter or to learn more about the tournament, call the pro shop at 675-3000.
