Parenting Our Special Children

I offer a unique perspective in the world of parenting. My long-awaited
extremely precious only son was almost lost to us in the first hours of his
life and is now growing up to be sweet and lovable but also physically
medically and cognitively handicapped. I sometimes remark that after giving me
twelve years of no responsibility for children Hashem has now given me the
responsibilities of a mother of twelve.

What I can attest is that having a child is nothing to take for
granted. Certainly having a healthy child is something for which every parent so
blessed should be eternally grateful.

Soon after we realized that my son was not going to be a “typical”
child a secular Israeli doctor in Hadassah
Ein
Kerem
Hospital taught me an
important lesson: Every child can be compared to a ruler. It would be
irrelevant to take measurements with a metric ruler and an imperial ruler and deem
one inaccurate because it calculated a smaller number; it is similarly
irrelevant to compare children. Every child is his or her own ruler and should
only be measured against him- or herself.

This holds true for all children but all the more so for children
we label as “special.”