Monday, May 14, 2012

What I've learned about motherhood from my child with special needs


I wrote a guest post for the Huffington Post this weekend, part of a Mother's Day series. They asked me to write about what I know about motherhood from being a mom of a child with special needs. A snippet:

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. Some people might look at my son and see a child who walks a little unsteadily at times, speaks unclearly and has trouble grasping things. Me, I see a child who miraculously walks, talks in his own way and does his best to make his hands work even though they're often tight from the cerebral palsy. I see the ability in his disabilities. I see Max, a child as perfect as any other—and, at times, as bratty as any other. (Hello: He's a kid with special needs, not a saint.)

You can read all of it here, at Huffington Post. And, yes, I included a couple of classic Max photos, including this—one of my all-time favorites.

If you have a chance, please also check out:

Today is No Mothers Day, Too: My post on Babble Voices about why 1000 women are going to die today, and how we can help.

The God Box: Lessons My Mom Taught Me About Life... After She Died: A beautiful, inspirational post by the author of a new book.

3 comments:

  1. "Perfection is in the eye of the beholder" Love that!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Loved it so much, Ellen. I love how you always make me feel better.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Ellen,
    This is Kathryn and I wanted to let you know that last night my school's Penny Harvest donated $588 to ASIPRe NY which is an albany based recration group for teens on the Austism Spectrum.I got to give the long speech and then meet some of the teens who are part of ASPIRe.This felt like a Special Needs Comuntiy victory to me because I had to fight to get the money there.You see I was on the round table with three boys and we had to decide local organizations to donate the 2,840 dollars that we raised to. These boys and the adviser were against this donation because they thinkph boy im not going there.Anyway,after 6 weeks of debating we donated 2,052 dollars to BACC the comunity center which has sports programs which they play and 788 dollars to ASPIRe.Thats as even as I could get it. :) One of the most memorble teens I met last night was a 16 year old girl Kalee who has PDD-NOS she gave me a hug and then we talked finalley i am going to volenteer there this summer .

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for sharing!