Adoption Under One Roof

Reading Faith’s recent post Coming to Terms with Your Adopted Child’s Special Needs has had me thinking for the past day or so about the term ‘special needs’ and how it leads one to believe that somehow the child with ‘special needs’ is less of a person because they need to be cared for differently than most, or have a specific way that they must be cared for that cannot be deviated from or harm could come to the child.

However the more that I thought about it, the more that I began to realize that every child, in some way or another is a special needs child. Every child has both strengths and weaknesses, and the weaknesses of each child are essentially their special needs. Normally when we think of special needs, we think of having to go above and beyond normal parental duties in order to care for the child, yet again, this is something that every parent for one reason or another will have to do for their child(ren) throughout their rearing.