When you first learn that your child has a disability ...
If you have just been told that your young child has a disability, or if you remember your own experiences, you may understand what these young mothers were feeling.
“Scared. I was a young mother very scared. I also had a lot of negative thoughts. I blamed myself. I was told my daughter wouldn’t walk. I think my main feeling was that this was so scary, thinking how was I going to do this as a young mother.”
“When he was nine months old he was like a newborn child yet. And he started having what I didn’t know at the time was a seizure. Before that I never even knew that there were people that were born with disabilities…First of all …I was immature as far as the knowledge of it even as a parent. I was a very young parent… so I came from being cared for by grandmother and extended family to getting into a relationship where I wasn’t really grown up yet so when I found out I basically fell apart.”
Evelyn Klimpel is a Native American mother (Crow/Hidatsa), has a masters degree in Elementary Education and worked down the hall from the Infant-Toddler program when her third son was born. She suspected her son had a disability, maybe even a mental illness. In her article, “You don’t know what you don’t know” she gives a lot of reasons for not contacting services that could help her. She didn’t want to be thought a bad mother. She was afraid to hear the answers. She thought she should be able to take care of her son herself.
Click here for a newsletter with Evelyn's story. This newsletter is an example of the types of information you can find in the Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc. Commons Area.
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