No limits A special needs diagnosis doesn’t mean the end of dreams
SPECIAL NEEDS
BY TAMARA L. O’SHAUGHNESSY
K
ristin Kimble remembers looking at her beautiful newborn’s eyes and her shock of thick black hair and thinking, Oh, she has Down syndrome. Her euphoria with her new baby turned to tears for just about 24 hours. Kimble, who had spent six years working in special education at the high school level, wasn’t upset that Ivy has Down syndrome. The tears came because she had seen too much of how hard life could be with special needs. “I didn’t want the world to treat Ivy the way I had seen kids with special needs be treated and I was very scared about that. I didn’t want anyone to put limits on her or make her feel like she couldn’t do something, couldn’t be something,” Kimble says. When she dried those tears, she and her husband made a decision. “I am going to make sure that this is not the world that she lives in,” she says. Kathy Zebracki, chief of psychology at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Chicago, says she sees society becoming more accepting and open and the opportunities increasing for people with special needs. “I think we still have a way to go, unfortunately,” she says. In her role, she encourages families to help their children follow their dreams, balancing their big dreams with their skills, just like they’d do with their other children. Barriers, she says, can be devastating for a child. “We need to focus on what they can do, not what they can’t do.”
18 March 2020 CHICAGOPARENT.COM
