Leading the Blind

                            I can't think of any better life motto for Christian than this. Christian can't be like the rest of the world even if he tries. Everywhere Christian goes, he stands out. He is different. That is just a fact. No need to dance around it. He is marching to the beat of his own drum in life. And I couldn't be happier about it. Christian and others like him are changing the dialogue about disability and life BECAUSE they are different and because they are not like everyone else. What's so great about being just like everyone else anyways? And what is so wrong with not being like everyone else? Who even gets to decide where the range  of "normal" looks like? I heard a line in an episode of Supernatural once (years ago, before kids, when I actually got to watch TV sometimes). Dean Winchester said "Most people live and die without ever moving more than the dirt it takes to bury t...

When someone doesn't have personal experience with sensory issues, when neither them nor someone they are intimately antiquated with have sensory issues, I can only imagine what that looks like from the outside looking in. A few things that I often wonder if people see when they see my kids struggling with sensory issues include "What a brat!" "If that was my kid I would.....X, Y, Z." "Why doesn't she just spank that kid and make him stop acting like that." "If she would just X, Y, Z, then her kid wouldn't have these issues." That's not an exhaustive list.  In my on going effort to make the world more knowledgeable about disabilities and to promote the acceptance and integration of people with disabilities fully and wholly into our society, I want to talk about what sensory issues really are, and what they really mean to the people who have them and the people who love people who have them. I hope this post s...