The following was shared with me by a friend who received it from his sister:
I would just like to put this out there. If your kids are not around special needs kids at school and have never been taught that not everyone is the same, maybe you could take 10 min tonight to explain this to them. Even though they may not be around these kids at school, they may see them at church, at the mall, at the grocery store, or at the park. In light of news stories on the exclusion of a child who has autism from participating in a school trip and a child with Down Syndrome being kicked out of dance class because she couldn’t keep up, I feel the need to write this. There are boys and girls that nobody invites to birthday parties for example. There are special kids who want to belong to a team but don’t get selected because it is more important to win than include these children. Children with special needs are not rare or strange, they only want what everyone else wants–to be accepted.