Showing posts with label spina bifida. Show all posts

The Letter I Want My Daughter to Read If She Gets Bullied

By Lindsay Smith

The issue of bullying and kiddo meanness surfaced when I recently talked to other special needs parents. It made me realize our battle against bullying may be a tough one, but it’s one I know we can win together.
The other day I was swapping stores with a friend whose child also has some physical limitations. She shared that her 4-year-old was made fun of in a bouncy house because she didn’t “hop like everyone else.”
Is nothing sacred anymore? 4 years old?! A bouncy house, for god’s sake?! What is this world coming to?
After we had that out of the way, we moved on to how to parent during that tough, horrible moment. We agreed the best course of action is helping your child, your baby, through the bullying just as we were helped by our loved ones.
One hard lesson I’m going to need to learn as a parent: Kids get picked on. It doesn’t matter what you do to protect them; it’s bound to happen at some point. And I think our job as parents is to help them learn from it, to treat others with respect and to move on and be stronger because of it.
To my own baby girl, I hope you read this one day and know your mom truly gets it.
My Dear Olivia Michelle, 
This letter is for you to read when you’re sad and feel alone, like the world is against you.
You are not alone.
I was picked on. A lot. The random person standing next to you at the store was also picked on.
One day, you’ll find people who love you for who you are, I promise.
When you’ve had your feelings hurt, there is nothing to be embarrassed about. I know because I’ve been there. Not because of spina bifida or some other disability; just for being a kid who was different in some way from everyone else.

Exhibit A that Mom “gets it”:
In fourth grade, I got glasses six months into starting a new school. I went from semi-popular to bottom of the barrel practically overnight. My “friends” wrote a play about me where I got beat up (perhaps worse, I really blocked out the details), and I didn’t go to my last two weeks of school because they made me feel so horrible. Then we moved back to Illinois. (Yay!)...
Get the full letter at The Mighty.

http://themighty.com/2015/07/1the-letter-i-want-my-daughter-to-read-if-she-gets-bullied/#ixzz3fsWLH2dQ
bullying

Family's Entry to Department Store Blocked Because Son's Wheelchair Looked Like a ‘Toy'

By Jennifer O'Neill

After a security guard at Harrod’s stopped Shelly Wall and her family from entering the store with a wheelchair that her son Noah, who has spina bifida, uses, she tells Yahoo Parenting they fled the department store “crying.” (Noah and his sister Steph are shown here. Photo: Facebook/Shellybobbins).
To Shelly Wall, her son Noah’s wheelchair is a godsend, giving the partially paralyzed 3-year-old with spina bifida mobility. But to a security guard at Harrod’s, the small blue ZipZac wheelchair just looked like a play car. So the guard told the Wall family, visiting the famed London department store on June 22, that they would have to leave the “toy,” as she says the man called it, in the luggage department. 
“The guard said, ‘How is that a wheelchair?’” Wall tells Yahoo Parenting, explaining that Noah’s grandmother was carrying the ZipZac wheelchair when they were confronted, while Noah was in a Silver Cross stroller. The family brought the wheelchair so that when they visited the Disney Café and the toy department, Noah could see everything and play around. “I’m sorry but the definition of a wheelchair is a chair with wheels,” fumes the 43-year-old. “Why do we have this problem?”

 Standing up to the guard, though, proved more aggravating than helpful. “We were all really, really upset,” she says. “Grandma had to leave the shop while I was having to explain that this is Noah’s wheelchair and he needs it because he is disabled. But what was the most upsetting is that my daughter got so angry.”....

 Access the full story at Yahoo! Parenting.
https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/moms-entry-to-department-store-blocked-because-122432435457.html
advocate

'Disabled' Mannequins Remind Us That Beautiful Doesn't Mean 'Perfect'


The Huffington Post  |  By 
It's no secret that the smooth, plastic bodies staring out of store windows aren't true physical replicas of the people who stare back at them. But there's no reason they can't be.
Pro Infirmis, an organization for the disabled, created a series of mannequins based on real people with physical disabilities, working with individuals like Jasmine Rechsteiner, a Miss Handicap winner who has spine malformations, and Erwin Aljukić, an actor with brittle bone disease. The project's title? "Because Who Is Perfect? Get Closer."
Read the full article at Huffingtonpost
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/03/disabled-mannequins-video_n_4379586.html)
physically disabled

Benefits Britain 1949


Benefits Britain … Karen.
Benefits Britain … Karen. Photograph: Channel 4

Benefits Britain 1949 (Channel 4) was another time-travel bootcamp. You know the type. The sub-genre of documentary that asks such bold questions as: how will modern schoolchildren cope spending a week as Victorian mudlarks? Or what happens when three dads try to live by the laws of 12th-century Russia? Or what will young mum Sarah learn when she agrees to give birth in Latin? Excuses, one and all, to bother and berate people on some flimsy historical premise until they burst out crying, and have the narrator conclude: "Well, I guess we've really learned something."
In for an old-school bothering this week were benefits claimants Karen, Craig and Melvyn. Karen had arthritis, diabetes, heart problems and high blood pressure. This year, after three decades of employment, she was judged incapable of working, and granted benefits of £155 a week. Wheelchair user Craig had spina bifida but was determined to find work. In the past three years he had sent out more than 1,000 job applications and received, in return, five interviews and not one job. Melvyn was 75 years old, a widower, and getting by on his state pension of £134 a week. And if you read all that and thought: "I'd love to see those three weeping," you were in for a treat.
Read the full story at the Guardian 
diabetes
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)