Do you feel this way as a parent to a disabled child?

I found this poem a little while ago and at the time my daughter had just been diagnosed. I felt I could really relate to it, and I have kept it on my laptop since.

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 pa
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.

How do you feel reading this? Am i strange for feeling so strongly about it, I am 21 and my daughter has optic nerve hypoplasia
Chili~ indeed it was her that wrote that hun, if you speak to her can you please tell her how much she changed my life as my life went downhill when my daughter was diagnosed UNTIL i found this poem that put everything into perspective and gave everything a whole new light and way of seeing things.
I love Holland and dont care that I’m not in Italy now as im having so much fun and learning so much being here in Holland.
xx
Can I just add that I am quite new to Holland so I’m still exploring as my daughter turned 2 on Sat 19th April and our plane touched down when she was 4 weeks old.
xxx

If I’m still paying child support for a disabled child over 18, does my visitation end becasue my ex says so?

My son has always wanted to spend time with me. In trying to set up summer vacation, my ex informed me that she, her current husband and my son would discuss and and they would all decide (with me having no input). My son is mildly mentally handicapped, with aspergers and possibly some autism (never officially diagnosed). As a result, unlike a normal 18 year old won’t, or can’t say “I’m going with my Dad. Be back Sunday. Love ya). I’m just wondering if I have any rights here. It’s Indiana where supposrt lasts to 21 typically.

Is this list any good to show to a lawyer, in a child costody battle?

1. Several counts of harassing phone calls to the Defendant.
2. Also several calls to the child in question, making him cry and requiring him to talk to her in solitude.
3. On numerous occasions the Defendant received phone calls from the child, crying, wanting to come back to the Defendants residence after events at his mother’s residence.
4. Said the Defendant was not allowing the child to be an individual; which in her case meant: being a “gangster”, sagging pants, tattoos, piercings, and listening to vulgar and inappropriate music.
5. The Plaintiff has purchased and allowed the purchase of vulgar CD’s.
6. The Plaintiff has no religious practices in her home.
7. Has told the child that Hell is an imaginary place, made up to frighten people into complying with the law, which gives the child the impression that he can misbehave without consequence.
8. The Plaintiff’s husband has been known to slap the child and the other children in the house in the back of the head. This being one of the reasons the child had called his father to come and pick him up.
9. The Plaintiff’s eldest son was seeing a therapist for anger issues.
10. The Plaintiff also has left the child and his brother unattended, where they walked from their home to a GoodWill store and a BlockBuster and back unnoticed.
11. The Plaintiff also has left her children in the care of an irresponsible babysitter, who the child said hit him in the face with a shoe.
12. Member of the Plaintiff’s immediate family was arrested for being associated with drug dealers.
13. The Plaintiff has had numerous episodes where she shouted at and used profane language with the Defendant, where the Defendant neither shouted back nor used profane language, in front of the child.
14. The child’s unsatisfactory behavior started as early as the first grade, while he was in his mother’s care. Such as: getting kicked off the bus, bad homework habits, and unsatisfactory grades, failing both first and third grade.
15. Recently the Plaintiff withheld the child from a church event (vacation bible school).
16. The Plaintiff has three children from three different men and four marriages, one of which was annulled one or two weeks later. The man she is married to now is the same man who abandoned her and her eldest son. Also is guilty of several counts of adultery.
17. The Plaintiff has no visible means of financial support other than a mentally disabled man, who has no relation to her and lives in her home.
18. The Plaintiff has not paid any form of child support or financial obligation as required by the parenting plan.

Disabled Vet needs to find grant or funding for a boot camp or military school for a troubled child with ADD?

child of a disabled veteran school benefits?

I am a child of a disabled veteran. I am 25 years old and wanting to start up college in the fall. I actually just called my dad to ask him if I still qualify to get my tuition paid for since I’m 25, he said he wasn’t for sure (hes out at Andrews Air Force base right now on vacation). Does anyone know If I still qualify or not? If you aren’t for sure do you know of any offices or numbers I should call to check and see?
Thanks!!
I’m going up to the school tomorrow and talking to someone in the Veterans Affair office.
thanks! =)
What do you exactly mean by 100% disabled? I know he was honorably discharged due to disability. He had 2 strokes when he was in.

Vacations for families with a handicap child?

my family and I always go to the same places for vacation because i have a brother who is in a wheel chair. We wanted to go some place different like Hawaii or something fun like that but it is hard because of my brother. Does anyone have any ideas or know of any travel places that specialize in planning vacations for people who have disabilities? All different types of places including other countries are options for us.

A little info about him: he is 17 , in a wheel chair and has cerebral palsy.

so if anyone has any ideas or knows of a website or a travel place that specializes or can help us plan a trip for next year that would be great.