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Close Topic OptionsRaising A Special Needs Child: A Trip To Holland
Raising Special Child Trip Holland - Psychology, Special Needs, Health - Posted: 8th Mar, 2008 - 11:59am
Posts: 3 - Views: 890
Raising A Special Needs Child: A Trip To Holland
When I read this sort of poem, I knew exactly what the author tried to say. I think this is exactly how parents of special needs children feel:
| QUOTE |
| Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this.... When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland." "Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned." And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss. But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland. |
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Very nice. I guess no one will ever know what it is like to have a special needs child unless of course you have one yourself. The thinking is so different and you have to adjust yourself to the understanding of their way of thinking - a lifelong process, I've been doing it for almost eight years now and still learning new things and the 'vowels' of the language.
Raising A Special Needs Child: A Trip To Holland Health & Special Psychology
I can really see where this writer is coming from, and as JB pointed out, people really don't have a clue unless they've been through it themselves.
One of the major things that always upsets me is when people say to my daughter "can you look at me when I'm speaking to you?"
Well no, for some children, they cannot give the required eye contact, and for most people it's something that's so accepted to be 'natural' but for children who cannot do it, it can actually be painful and uncomfortable for them to even try!
There are then the other people who look at your children as though they are 'badly behaved' when really their behavior is all part of the disorder, I could carry on for pages of differences, but really you just want to see understanding being shown instead of disgust or pity.
TOPIC: Raising A Special Needs Child: A Trip To Holland