A friend with an adopted daughter and two biological daughter has very sensible concerns that people will make comparisons between the kids. She is worried what people would say about her kids. I got over that a long time ago.

One of the things about having a kid with a disability is that it really sorts out the people in your life.

Ian developed perfectly normally until he was two. If anything, he hit his milestones early. He was holding his own bottle at six months and walking by ten months. He was a smiley, good natured kid who was a favorite of all the babysitters. Everything was cool except for the speech.

Then between two and four, he screamed a lot. He had a handful of words. And he could read. After some trauma, we got over the special education label and he received lots of therapy. Now that Ian is six, he's still a little different, but we don't care. His speech, while a bit clumsy, is serviceable. He's smarter than I am. He has a great sense of humor and gives the best hugs. He's perfect. 

Our biggest problems are how other people treat him. Ian's 2 to 4 years were tough on me. It was made worse by some people who thought that the reason that Ian screamed and didn't talk was because of bad parenting. Some people thought he couldn't talk, because I wasn't strict enough with him.

There's a six year old in the neighborhood who calls up to invite himself over, but won't allow Ian in his house. I guess that's okay with his mother. Some people think that the normal rules of nice-ness don't apply to special education kids. I've heard some parent say that all the kids in the class have to come to a birthday parent, except the inclusion kids.

There are the people who will brag about their gifted and talented kids, but look uncomfortable when I brag about Ian's triumphs. And don't you know that I'm thinking that my kid is so much cooler than their monkey-faced brats.

And then there are the people who just clearly can't handle imperfection. They don't know what to say to Ian and just wish that they didn't have to be confronted with this situation. And Ian isn't even all that disabled. His biggest problem is speech. If you didn't know he was in special education and didn't ask him a complicated question, you would have no idea that he was different.

I have not noticed a correlation between religiosity and niceness to special education kids. That's okay. Their hell will have a very warm spot for them in the future.

Sometimes I get my feelings hurt by all this nonsense. Sometimes I get angry and want to get out the pitchforks and skewer some assholes, but I'm trying to be more zen about the whole thing. So, I've gotten quite used to the people who think nasty thoughts about my kids. The good thing is that there are also lots of people who don't. I'm calmly and serenely sorting out these two types of people in my life.