This is the first in a series on the impact of special needs on parents.

As parents of special needs children, we have all experienced the impact this has had on our lives. We have been witnesses to the transformation of our families, our priorities, our goals, and our centers of joy and frustration. We have discovered new depths of our hearts, new highs and new lows.

We couldn’t have foreseen the heights to which our love could soar, nor could we have imagined the valleys in which we can fall if we aren’t in careful check of our emotions.

There is no way to quantify the changes we have gone through as members of this exclusive population of parents, nor would I even try; mostly because the changes are ever-happening, as we are in continuous evolution with each new hurdle and triumph.

Barbara Curtis once wrote an article for World Magazine in which she touches upon this impact on her family and her heart.

I call Jonathan my little extra because he has an extra chromosome-you know, that extra one on the 21st pair that causes such consternation in most potential parents. Down syndrome, it’s called-named after the doctor who first “discovered” it. Trisomy-21 in modern genetics-like I said: Third chromosome, 21st pair.

Before he was born in 1992, I’d prepared birth announcements with a verse from Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.” That’s how I had felt about each of my children. And that’s how I felt when they put this new little baby in my arms and I could see he looked, well, just a little different.

Tripp said we’d name him Jonathan-”Gift of God.”

Read the remainder of Barbara’s article entitled “My Little Extra” here.

What type of impact has your family seen since a special needs child became a member of it?

photo by PaulEisenberg