Do special needs kids enrich parents’ lives?
No one who doesn’t have a child with special needs can possibly understand what parents who do are going through. But we often—after thanking our lucky stars that our children are okay–try to imagine how difficult caring for a special needs child must be and wonder how we’d handle it. I certainly do. And that’s why I was especially interested in a new study of parents of children with trisomy 13 or 18 (both are severe chromosomal abnormalities that usually kill children before their first birthday. And the children who survive often have significant physical and cognitive disabilities). Keep in mind that in almost every case, the chromosomal abnormality was picked up in a prenatal test and the parents had a chance to terminate the pregnancy, which is what most couples in this situation do. It’s probably a sign of some character defect on my part, but I’m pretty sure