Special Needs or Disability: The Language My Daughter With Cerebral Palsy Wants Me to Use
In different disability circles there seems to be a conversation about “preferred language.” For example, many of us parents feel strongly about “people first language” and most professionals are taught to use it. However, almost all my friends...
When My Daughter With Down Syndrome Got a Makeover at the Mall
My youngest daughter has Down syndrome. She also happens to have a great love for fashion which includes: clothes, hair and makeup. She’s the girl who watches makeup and hair tutorials on youtube, then proceeds to try it on her own. Even at 5:00 am one morning,...
When a Classmate Called My Daughter the R-Word
We knew this day would happen, the day someone would call one of my kids the r-word. The r-word is hate-speech towards people with disabilities. The disability community is vocal about the use of the word and why it is harmful and violent towards their community. This...
Disability Etiquette When Meeting Kids With Disabilities and Their Parents
Before having kids with disabilities, I was not aware about my interactions around people with disabilities. When our friends’ daughter was born with Down syndrome, I said some things that were ignorant and showed how little I knew about people with...
Dear Mom of a Child With a Disability, I Celebrate You
Having a child with a disability can make life different from what other moms of typical children experience. On a day like Mother’s Day, while friends receive cards from their kids, breakfast in bed as a result of the loving attempt from little chefs, and homemade...
Ellen Stumbo writes and speaks about finding beauty in brokenness with gritty honesty and openness. She's passionate about sharing the real – sometimes beautiful and sometimes ugly – aspects of faith, parenting, special needs, and adoption. Ellen’s writing has appeared on Focus on the Family, LifeWay, MomSense, Not Alone, Mamapedia and the Huffington Post.