Special Treatment

At The Washington Post’s On Balance blog, a father writes about Samuel, his seven-year-old son with cerebral palsy. He writes this about parenting a child with a disability:

My experience is that parents of children with disabilities face a
different balancing act. One big struggle is balancing time spent
supporting a child with a disability vs. the family’s other child(ren).
Others include marshaling the time, energy and financial resources
needed to manage a child’s medical care and therapy, and the scarce
resources left for yourself, your relationship with your spouse, and
your work.

I think about my own family and how the gravity well of my disability shaped and tempered our dynamics. I consumed a lot of of my parents’ time and energy, especially during those years when it seemed like I was getting sick every other week. And my siblings sometimes had to assume the role of caregiver or personal assistant, particularly my brother. We used to play computer games that I didn’t have the dexterity to play independently (oh, Wing Commander II, how I miss your awesomeness). And when I wanted to play and he didn’t, my petulant rages would eclipse anything that any of those whiners My Super Sweet Sixteen could muster.

I have good, close relationships with my parents and siblings, in large part because I learned that I am not, in fact, the center of the universe. Now, when I see other families coddling or kowtowing to their kids with disabilities, I wince a little bit. We may look innocent, but many of us have an almost preternatural ability to bend minds to our will.