Telling it like it is

The following is from a reader called Jo Pearson. There's a danger of going into Pollyanna-overdrive if you are the parent of a disabled child. As one of my correspondents points out below, you can survive for years in 'happy-clappy denial', and there's nothing wrong with that: whatever gets you through the day, is my view.

But there's also nothing wrong in articulating the feelings of anger, sickness and disbelief when you realise you've joined the club nobody on earth wants to belong to. Jo does this very well, I think - the bit in her letter about trying to make her child model for the Boden catalogue made me feel like laughing and crying at the same time.

Here's her story:

“I never wanted to be the mother of a special needs child. Well, who does?

I didn’t know much about disability, and I came from the sort of family who weren’t very tolerant of it. The disabled kids (Down’s Syndrome, in the main) that I saw in the 1970s were universally
 appallingly and inappropriately dressed. So when I gave birth to my son and he wasn’t ‘normal,’ my first, shameful thought was ‘Oh God, I won’t be able to dress him in anything nice’. How shallow is that?