Inspiration

This This got me thinking about all those simple, wonderful things that go along with having a child with Down syndrome. The stuff they don't tell you when the genetic counselor is sitting there with a flip board explaining chromosomes and whatnot...

Things that come so easily for most children do not come so easily for my child. The confusing, murky world of interpersonal communication remains a puzzle that seems to have a perpetual missing piece...

I had no support from my husband, who was in denial, and kept on insisting that ADHD is not a real disorder. “What she needs,” he insisted, “is an iron hand!” He, like many parents, had difficulty coming to terms with the fact that his child was not like everyone else...

This type of parenting requires walking a tightrope. It requires perfect self-control and vigilance against the small slips of anger and impatience that accompany even the best parenting. It requires abundant giving with delayed returns...

I know you asked the school before you left today “if they knew what they were doing to a kid who had really been trying so hard.” And I know they didn’t have a reply for you . . .

They call her "special." But I call you, my dear volunteers, special. You are the ones who are extraordinary, unique, rare, different and so wonderful. You are the ones with special souls...

When Jill was born her doctor advised her parents to "let her go." Jill's mother informed the doctor that she would only permit the infant to go one place and that was directly to her heart...

Now that I have been granted the child that I prayed for, and he does have special needs, I am finding that specialness more than I bargained for...

Paralyzed from the waist down and wheelchair-bound since infancy, she was at one time in a special school for special kids, on a special bus with a special helper . . .

My oldest son, Gabriel, who just turned six, was born with a rare craniofacial birth defect, called Treacher Collins Syndrome. The past few weeks have been a bit stressful, as we were preparing for Gabriel's ninth surgery...