Reply to s/o - Aborting because a child is "disabled"

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "s/o - Aborting because a child is "disabled""

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote]Yes, you can judge decisions other people make! I'm not trying to make those decisions illegal. But I do judge some choices, and I'm sure you do too. People kid themselves. They say; I don't have the resources to take on a child with Ds. But, [b]if they have health insurance (and most people on here do) and live in a county with early intervention (which is mandated by law) then children with Ds specifically don't take many more financial resources than typical kids[/b]. Then it's; I can't handle the challenges of a child with an intellectual disability. I'm trying to say that our social construct disregards the lives of the disabled, especially those with intellectual disabilities, which leads people to make decisions based on fear and incorrect assumptions rather than reality.

This whole, "I don't have enough to give this kid what they really deserve," may not really be true. What is true is that the parent is afraid to try, because of all the misinformation and prejudice against people with intellectual disabilities there is. And I would be too. But when you look at those who have, most of them are very grateful for their kids.[/quote]

I'm 20:01 from this page http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/105/230128.page .  I'm so sick of you repeating this bullshit.  Maybe at your socio-economic level this is true but it's not true for those of us who would be upper middle income (HHI of $150,000).  My kids don't have Ds but with 2 kids in therapy for the last 5 years, I've met a number of families with Ds kids.  It actually doesn't matter what the disorder is, we're getting the same therapies and services.  There are significant insurance limitations on therapies and county early intervention services are also limited.  While I'm very grateful for the county early intervention programs, they actually represent the minimum level of services, not necessarily therapeutic level of services.  And, the county bills your insurance for the visit - meaning you can't do additional private therapies without paying the entire cost out of pocket.  It's also difficult to find good service providers that are in network, within a reasonable commuting distance, without a waiting list and with an appointment time that you can make it to.  It's a lot easier to get a 9:00 appointment but you'll have to take off work.  Most insurances won't allow you to have two therapy sessions on one day - so you can't have speech therapy and occupational therapy on the same day without paying for one of those sessions completely out of pocket.  A therapy session is typically $120 for 50 minutes but there are additional costs for the evaluations/re-evaluations because they pass on the costs of the standardized tests that they use.  Early intervention will pay for medical/assistive devices expenses not covered by your insurance but that ends at age 3.  My kids have to wear custom orthodics coming up to their calves (which many Ds kids have to wear because of low muscle tone).  Insurance only covers so much per year and those orthodics can run $600 even though the providers try to help us economize. Then, there's the cost of the shoes.  We travel from NOVA to Shoe Train in Cabin John every couple of months because that's the only place we can get shoes to fit over the orthodics.  Every other family I know with Ds kids does the same thing.  We just can't go to Payless and run in and pick something up.

In your other posts, you've made clear what your issue is - [quote]I think if you feel completely unprepared or unwilling to raise a child with a disability you shouldn't have kids, because you never know what you're going to get. [/quote]  That's what this really boils down to.  Talk all you want about how you feel about 'life' but stop with the bullshit that it's not much different raising SN kids than it is NT kids.  It is untrue, disrepectful and incredibly dismissive of the struggles those of us with SN kids are going through.

I'm still waiting for someone to point me to an organziation that will help us in our struggle.  See my earlier post for more information on what our needs are.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics