{"id":1746,"date":"2007-11-06T20:09:44","date_gmt":"2007-11-06T20:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1746"},"modified":"2007-11-06T20:09:44","modified_gmt":"2007-11-06T20:09:44","slug":"special_treatme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1746","title":{"rendered":"Special Treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

My experience is that parents of children with disabilities face a
\ndifferent balancing act. One big struggle is balancing time spent
\nsupporting a child with a disability vs. the family’s other child(ren).
\nOthers include marshaling the time, energy and financial resources
\nneeded to manage a child’s medical care and therapy, and the scarce
\nresources left for yourself, your relationship with your spouse, and
\nyour work.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, 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<\/i><\/a> could muster. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-sa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}