Child Disability Quotes & Sayings

Some parents manufacture an affirmative construction of their child's disability to disguise their despair, while others have a deep and genuine experience of joy in caring for disabled children, and that sometimes the first stance can generate the second. — Andrew Solomon

Union members not only earn higher median wages; they are more likely to have paid sick leave, short-term disability, and employer-provided child care. Giving people a voice at work - the ability to organize and negotiate for their fair share of the value they helped create - is absolutely essential to a growing, vibrant middle class. — Thomas Perez

My real feeling, the one I couldn't articulate yet, was that my entire life hinged on knowing that there were people who would continue to love me unconditionally, even if I were damaged, even if I were sick. Such love was the only thing that had sustained me during the turmoil of the past months. If I eliminated my child because of his disability, if I put him out of my life, I would be violating the only thing that was keeping me alive. — Martha N. Beck

When it is managed effectively, in-home nursing can become a support for caregivers and families stressed with the care of a medically fragile child. — Charisse Montgomery

I Have a Dream ... someday my son, Zyon and ALL individuals with disabilities will be seen as HUMAN beings.
I Have a Dream ... someday the human & civil rights of individuals with disabilities are honored and they are treated as equals.
I Have a Dream ... someday ALL parents who have children with disabilities see their child as a blessing and not a burden.
I Have a Dream ... someday there will be more jobs and opportunities for individuals with disabilities.
I Have a Dream ... someday there will be UNITY "within" the disabled community.
I HAVE A DREAM!!! — Yvonne Pierre

You've developed the strength of a draft horse while holding onto the delicacy of a daffodil ... you are the mother, advocate and protector of a child with a disability. — Lori Borgman

Can the child who is Dell; be the outer emoodiment of man's quest to save himself? To cure himself? ... Or, to "be" himself? — Milkweed L. Augustine

Parents' early responses to and interactions with a child determine how that child comes to view himself. These parents are also profoundly changed by their experiences. If you have a child with a disability, you are forever the parent of a disabled child; it is one of the primary facts about you, fundamental to the way other people perceive and decipher you. Such parents tend to view aberrance as illness until habituation and love enable them to cope with their odd new reality - often by introducing the language of identity. Intimacy with difference fosters its accommodation. — Andrew Solomon

A young pregnant wife has been hospitalized for a simple attack of appendicitis. The doctors had to apply ice to her stomach and when the treatments ended the doctors suggested that she abort the child, they told her it was the 'best solution' because the baby would be born with some disability but the young brave wife decided not to abort, and the child was born. That woman was my Mother and I was the child. — Andrea Bocelli

Some would look at Emily's life and think that a child born with Down's syndrome has little hope for a meaningful life. Throw in the diagnosis of leukemia and that little hope turns into no hope whatsoever.
I disagree.
Emily's life, with all its imperfections, had great meaning. Because of how many people she touched, I realize that we are far more than what we can accomplish. We are the very thumbprints of God. — Matt Patterson

The passion for such children contains no ego motive of anticipated reciprocity; one is choosing against, in the poet Richard Wilbur's phrase, 'loving things for reasons'. You find beauty and hope in the existence, rather than the achievements, of such a child. Most parenthood entails some struggle to change, educate and improve one's children; people with multiple severe disabilities may not become anything else, and there is a compelling purity in parental engagement not with what might or should or will be, but with, simply, what is. — Andrew Solomon

Even though our journey as parents of a medically fragile child began with emotional turmoil, it has since become a purposeful odyssey that brings meaning and depth to our lives. This is the road we were born to travel. — Charisse Montgomery

What's been important in my understanding of myself and others is the fact that each one of us is so much more than any one thing. A sick child is much more than his or her sickness.
A person with a disability is much, much more than a handicap. A pediatrician is more than a medical doctor. You're MUCH more than your job description or your age or your income or your output. — Fred Rogers

Childhood vaccines are one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. Indeed, parents whose children are vaccinated no longer have to worry about their child's death or disability from whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, or a host of other infections. — Ezekiel Emanuel

Notice the difference: A child's disability is the focus in traditional classroom settings, but his abilities are the focus in the homeschool environment. — Sandra K. Cook

It is a lonely existence to be a child with a disability which no-one can see or understand, you exasperate your teachers, you disappoint your parents, and worst of all you know that you are not just stupid. — Susan Hampshire

As a child, I was called stupid and lazy. On the SAT I got 159 out of 800 in math. My parents had no idea that I had a learning disability. — Henry Winkler

Often as a child you see someone with a learning disability or Down's Syndrome and my mum and dad were always very quick to explain exactly what was going on and to be in their own way inclusive and welcoming. — Christopher Eccleston

I put up a huge wall of denial. It was years before I was able to break through it ... accepting that your child has a disability, especially one like LD that cannot be seen or easily diagnosed, is one of the hardest things to come to terms with. — Anne Ford

The more love and support your child receives, the richer his or her life becomes, and nurses can certainly add to the circle of love surrounding your child. — Charisse Montgomery

Disability is not predictive of the happiness of either the parent or the child, which reflects the larger puzzle that people who have won the lottery are, in the long run and on average, only marginally happier than amputees - people in each category having adjusted rather quickly to their new normal. — Andrew Solomon

Other people look at me and think: That poor woman; she has a child with a disability. But all I see when I look at you is that girl who had memorized all the words to Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by the time she was three, the girl who crawls into bed with me whenever there's a thunderstorm - not because you're afraid but because I am, the girl whose laugh has always vibrated inside my own body like a tuning fork. I would never have wished for an able-bodied child, because that child would have been someone who wasn't you. — Jodi Picoult

If your child has a disability, a problem of any kind, do not become so wrapped up with the problem that you neglect the child. Your child needs your unconditional love far more than anything else - far more than any medical care, no matter how necessary. Far — D. Ross Campbell

So, for example, if a child is labeled as having a learning disability, it has very concrete consequences for the kinds of services and potentially accommodations that child will get. — Robert Sternberg

If the only time a child looks as if he has bipolar disorder is when he's frustrated, that's not bipolar disorder; that's a learning disability in the domains of flexibility and frustration tolerance. — Ross W. Greene

If Republicans are aiming for the heart, for compassion, the last thing they should do is abandon the sanctity of life. Instead, they should tell Americans that they believe in the dignity and value of every human being, from the defenseless unborn child, to the newborn with a disability, to the 90-year-old dealing with dementia. — Gary Bauer