I just wanted to share this article, it was written by a Emily perl Kingsley who is the mother of a child with downs syndrome and I often use this when delivering parents courses to parents of children with SEN

Welcome to Holland

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."


And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

That's lovely summer, very thought provoking

ditto

those are for me, i feel like i need them after reading that

not quite sure why

My friend was given this by a support group not long after her son was diagnosed with autism, it made me cry then.

thats lovely

made me cry too

Made me cry the first time I read it, too.

WoW thats something special thanx for that

thats lovely summer

Well I was very cheerful, but now.......

does make you think, it's lovely but saddening at the same time.

Thats a very poetic way of looking at it Summer, and makes you remember to look for the good things.

Also a lot kinder than the health visitor who, when visiting my sister to give her news of her child's health said............'it's taken me 6 weeks to pluck up my courage to come and talk to you (?)your daughter has cerebal palsey'
'What does that mean?'
'Well put it this way,...you'll never see your daughter run up that garden path.'

oh dear, wrong job perhaps. How hard it must have on your sister to hear like that

Or the Paediatrician who ask my friend if she really wanted to take her third child home because she had CP and would be like a vegetable.She would never walk or talk or be"normal."My friend was furious and complained.She took her daughter home and worked with her for hours every day,instead of toys she made little weights with plastic bottles and rice adding more as she got stronger.She was late walking at 2yrs but she did it.By the time she was admitted to school at 4yrs she could walk,talk and run.No-one at school knew except the teacher and me.Non of the parents noticed.The only time you could tell was when she was tired she didn't walk as well with her left leg.She also took her back to the Paediatrician and made him eat his words!The mum is a midwife now.

I heard that at a meeting I've forgotten who wrote it but its very powerful.

just goes to show the power of parents will!!!

We had to discuss this poem on our course summer i think it is lovely and really makes you think deeply. x