Day 20...

Hi friends.. hope your week has been GREAT! :)
Ours has been good overall. But, I am so thankful that tomorrow is Friday and the weekend is right around the corner. Come to think of it though, I don't know why that would make me feel the slightest bit of relief. This weekend we are going to be pretty busy. Especially on Sunday. It is my daughters fall festival, and jog-a-thon. It is also my sons fall festival... but we will probably miss that one. Can't quite be in two places at once.
As a follow up to my boys shoe story the other day I have this to say... the shoe is still lost. ;) Good grief.

Anyway... today is Day 20, and I don't have some great fact to share. But I did want to share an article which revisits my thoughts on the word "retarded" a bit. Unlike the woman in the article I didn't use the word "retarded" often or at all when I was younger. Other words caught my fancy more I guess. But I love the reason that she finally quit using the word. The article is called "Why I quit using the word retarded". It really spoke to me since I AM the mother of a special needs child now.

I am going to share a very personal part of my life as a child, and it is a part that has led me to believe that God was really preparing me for a person like my boy in my life. When I was little I had an aunt who was a nurse at a "childrens home", and I remember visiting her there and there would be many developmentally delayed children there, and many with hydrocephalus. In the late 70's the treatment for children with hydrocephalus was different than it is now, in fact I think it went untreated like it does in many Eastern European countries to this day. I had never seen so many little children with these giant heads. Anyway... after my aunts time there at that home she felt that she really had a soft spot for children with developmental delays, and so her and her husband became foster parents for children who were handicapped, or delayed. They did ok with these kids, but while they weren't torturing these kids, they weren't treating them with dignity and compassion. They would make up these terrible nicknames for them, or mimic the gestures the kids made, or use the word retarded as slang towards these kids. And their girls saw their parents act that way, so they did it too. It wasn't until I had my boy that the magnitude of what I had heard and seen as a child REALLY hit me. I was SOOOO heartbroken for those kids. I wonder if their parents cared where they were, and if they believed that their child was getting the best care. My aunt and her girls never saw the error of their ways. To this day she still feels that she has that soft spot, and yet they still make fun of people who are differently abled, etc. I have severed my relationship with them for that, and many other reasons. But today I AM the mother of a developmentally delayed child who's heart is broken when she hears that word. People use all sorts of excuses as to why it is acceptable, but as I have shared before... the minute I hear the word escape someones mouth I instantly think "what a dumb ass". Anyway... I hope you go and check out that easy read article. It is short, sweet, and to the point.

I will be back tomorrow. Have a great FRIDAY! Woot! Woot!