Stacy follows a young boy with special needs on Facebook whose name is Matthew Mickelson Butman. If you click on the link, it will take you to his Facebook page if you want to check it out. This morning Stacy shared this quote from his page:
“I don’t think the worst thing that could happen to me is having a child with special needs. I think the worst thing would be to raise a child who is cruel to people with special needs.”
Since Matthew is only a kid, maybe 12 years old, I don’t think he wrote that. It looks like his mom and dad also keep his Facebook page updated so I assume it was one of them that posted that quote. I’m not sure if his parents wrote it, or if they found it somewhere else and copied and pasted it. If you happen to know the author of the quote, please let us know so I can provide proper credit.
Thinking about the above quote, I don’t think any of us plans to have a child with special needs. We were kind of devastated after James was born. If you’ve read Our Story, you know that we lost our first child to Trisomy 18 before he was born. We knew something was wrong early in the pregnancy., but when Stacy was pregnant with James, everything seemed normal. There was no indication that anything was wrong. It wasn’t until James was born that we realized things weren’t right. There really wasn’t any preparation.
Life threw us a major curveball that we were not prepared for. But is it the worst thing that could happen to us? No. We don’t love James any less. Do we wish he was normal? Of course. We don’t know what his life is going to be like, or how long his life is going to be. We don’t know if he is going to be made fun of because he is different, or if people will accept him regardless of his limitations. I will say this, though. If a child makes fun of James in the presence of their parent(s), and the parent(s) do nothing to correct their child, then shame on them. I know I can’t smack the child, because I would probably be arrested, but it should be okay to smack the parent, shouldn’t it? I mean if I were to say something cruel to someone that was disabled, or that had a different skin color, I know my parents would have given me a stern talking to, maybe even grounded me. I would have more than likely learned my lesson and not do it again. But if a kid says or does something mean and are not punished for it, then that’s just bad parenting. And how will they learn that it’s not okay?