Stealth Monsters

Today at Support for Special Needs:

Parents of special needs kids with less visible disabilities spend a lot of time trying to moderate the effects of curiosity and casual observation. We worry that our kids will be judged unfairly by the outward manifestations of their disabilities. When our kids manage to pass unnoticed through the world, we find ourselves admitting, with varying degrees of shame, that we are proud of them for avoiding the judgment and scorn of a cold society. But it's safe to say that we do the same things ourselves. It's different for us, of course. When we identify a kid having a meltdown in public as something besides an entitled brat, we do so with empathy. But we still do it. We still play our own version of "What's going on here, exactly?"