I know you're thinking, can one person really change my life?
Well let me tell you...
1. Loving Someone With Special Needs Makes You Special
Loving someone with special needs comes with challenges, and with these challenges you will grow in patience, kindness, and compassion. Patience is learned when you are faced with stubbornness, sensory overload, lack of attention, and the inability to comprehend situations. You learn to step back and look at the situation for what it is and let things work their course. Kindness is learned when you are able to look past the disability and look at the ability and see the joy brought about by special needs. Compassion is learned in the hardest of times. During a meltdown you might not be able to understand what is going through their mind, but your only goal is to make things better. By loving someone with special needs you learn to love in a special kind of way.
2. Everyone Deserves the Same Kind of Love
Just because someone has special needs, it does not mean that they should be loved any differently. Every child is loved and nurtured growing up, and a child with special needs receives the same love as any other child. A parent of a child with special needs will not love their child any less for their special needs.
3. Look Beyond the Impossible and See the Possible
Sure, a special needs child may be developmentally behind the other children their age, but they might excel in a certain area. Maybe that child is amazing at problem solving, but can't read. Maybe they are non-verbal, but they can communicate through a device. Maybe they don't have the fine motor skills to feed themselves, but today they were able to hold a fork in their hand for the first time. It is easy to look at the things that seem impossible, but there are so many things that are possible. The lives of special needs individuals are filled with possibilities, you just have to look beyond the surface to see them.
4. Their Biggest Need is to Be Accepted For Who They Are
Someone with special needs is still human. They have things that they do and don't like, they like certain music, they show love, they have feelings, and they desire to be accepted. In society, we all strive for acceptance, so what makes someone with special needs any different? They are who they are. They have their flaws, but so do we. They might express themselves in different ways, but it is our job to accept them for who they are. By letting them be themselves, we are making an environment that is accepting and loving of special needs.
5. They Have the Biggest Hearts
Individuals with special needs are some of the most loving people you will ever meet. Special needs children love to cuddle and show compassion towards you. They love to be around the people they love and show their love towards them in whatever way best suits them. Their hearts or unimaginable big, and they will change your heart too, you just have to give them a chance.
What Do I Know?
My older brother with non-verbal autism.
You might be wondering how anyone without first hand experience could write this. For the past 18 years of my life I have been living with a sibling with non-verbal autism. Through the highs and the lows of it all, I would not change a single thing about my life. I have learned so much over the years and have been changed in so many ways by loving someone with special needs.
