No one expected him to succeed. He was made fun of in school because of a horrible stuttering problem. His older brother and sister were brilliant; most often he felt like a shadow child rather than a sibling. Though extremely talented, the young shadow boy struggled to speak even one sentence clearly, causing him to […]

There is a place I sometimes used to call my second home: the waiting room. I’ll never forget the hours I spent with my special-needs son in waiting rooms—rooms with foam-filled sofas, tattered magazines, crying children, and tired-looking people who were staring at smudged, blandly painted walls. If there were windows, I watched the outside […]