This is a wonderful book describing how you can love those who are different; whether that be from an individual with special needs or a disability. Below are some excerpts from the book regarding the challenges of raising an individual with special needs. 

 

Look into the eyes of parents who are immersed in special needs caregiving, and you’ll see that their love tanks are nearly empty. That is due to the relentless demands of caring for a child with special needs and it leads to physical and emotional exhaustion. 

They often struggle with feelings of guilt and grief. Guilt because it’s a parent’s job to fix things, yet they can’t fix what’s wrong. Guilt because they resent the demands and limitations of caring for their child. Grief is often a daily companion of parents raising kids with special needs. 

One Mother in the book identified and named the 3 stages of grief she went through after her daughter’s diagnosis of cerebral palsy. The 1st stage of grief is the drowning stage where “all you can take in is that your child has a disability. You can’t do anything else. The 2nd is over-advocacy, when parents think ‘If I do this and this, it’ll get better.’ But they just end up swimming in all directions. The 3rd stage is the surfer stage. This is where the parent ‘see’s the wave coming, gets knocked down sometimes, but can get back up and surf most of the time’. Parents dealing with guilt and grief are often so absorbed with processing their own emotions they have little energy left to deal with much else. 

Many parents are filled with worries: worry that their children will die far too young or worry their children will outlive them and who will care for them. Parents in the first group are on constant alert. They worry about their children with weakened immune systems and they fear loss of function with children with muscular dystrophy or cystic fibrosis. 

 

 

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