Hope for Disabilities

Some people following this blog are parent's.  In some household's, the parent or parent's is or are the one or one's with the diagnosis, but the child or children may not have a diagnosis.  What do you do if your child has a new friend over that does not know that you have a diagnosis and they ask a lot of questions when they get to your house, and you fear that your child might be uncomfortable with this for a variety of reasons.  Some children who have a parent or parent's with a diagnosis might even be over protective of their parent or parent's to an extent because they may have seen them be bullied before and it makes them sad to see their parent or parent's go through this, so they do everything in their power to protect them from having to deal with it any more than they already have.  How do you tell your child or children that you appreciate them looking out for you, but you would rather take the time to talk to their friends and answer any questions that they might have about their friend's parent's diagnosis, so that their friend will feel comfortable coming over to spend time with your child or children and maybe even hang out with you and you can hopefully go from the parent with the diagnosis to the cool parent! 

Just because you happen to need a wheelchair or a walker to get around, or you have a prosthetic of some kind, or you have to do Insulin injections or something else, doesn't mean that your child or children's friend's need to feel uncomfortable, or be afraid of coming over. 

What about if a family moves to a new town and the children start at a new school?  How would you go about helping a child to feel comfortable introducing their new friends to their parent or parents who might have a diagnosis of some kind without the children feeling uncomfortable if the new kid or kids might not have been properly educated on how to handle a situation like this and they are asking a ton of questions and maybe the new kid's parent or parent's are embarrassed by the number of questions that their child is asking.  No child should be made to feel ashamed or embarrassed by asking innocent questions about things that they may never have seen before and don't understand.  There is a saying that goes something along the lines of, "The only wrong question, is the one that is not asked."  We need to be teaching our children, that it is okay to ask questions because that is how they learn and if they don't learn then there is no hope of ever ending disability discrimination.