Mom's Heartbreaking Message to Parents After Kids "Stared and Pointed" at Her Son ~ health and fitness,celebrity news,fashion blog,beauty women,whole foods,quotes about love

vendredi 21 juillet 2017

Mom's Heartbreaking Message to Parents After Kids "Stared and Pointed" at Her Son

After a visit to a new church with her family, Stacey Jackson Gagnon was heartbroken over watching a large group of children stare and point at her son, Joel. The mom admitted in a post to Facebook that she knows her son, who has a cranio-facial impairment and is missing an ear and some bone structure, looks different, but that this day in particular "hurt."

Along with the story of the morning's events, Stacey is sharing an important message she hopes will spread to other parents and is encouraging them all to "take a moment and share all kinds of different" with their kids.

"I stood at the door and watched every child look with eyes wide and mouths open at my child. I stepped in and was about to address the entire class about differences; but then I stopped. I stopped and looked to the back of the room where my son had fled to hide," Stacey wrote. "He had buried his head in his arms because you cannot hide in plain sight. My heart sank and the room remained silent as I walked back to Joel. I touched his shoulder and he raised eyes shiny with tears and a face red with shame. I knelt down and asked, 'Do you want to leave?' 'Yes,' he whispered, and he stood and ran from the room. I held him in my arms during church and he drew 'Joel loves Mom' on my palm. Tears welled in my throat."

The devastated mom shared that her son deserves so much more than what he experienced in that room, which made her think about all the things she could have but didn't say in the moment. "In the past, I have always stepped into the role of teacher to educate kids," she wrote. "This has happened before, and I would step in and talk about differences, but today I did not. Today, I did not teach someone else's kid because I was too busy holding my brokenhearted son."

Stacey ends her post with an important message she hopes will reach parents in order to make the world a more accepting place, not just for Joel, but for everyone.

So I ask all parents this, teach your children. Teach your children that many people look different. Show them pictures of people that look different. And then explain that it is not okay to stare at someone that looks different, it's not okay to point. Teach them that my boy is the same on the inside as your child is. He loves Dodge Ram trucks, and Minecraft, and digging in the dirt. He loves ketchup, but does not love broccoli. And mostly, he does not like people staring or pointing out that he looks different. I don't think he needs this pointed out, it's something he lives with everyday.

I am not angry. I do not think these were bad, mean children. I think no one has ever taught them. And so this post is asking you to take a moment tonight and talk about what to do when you see someone that looks different. Show them pictures of people with different colored skin, different eyes, different abilities to talk, walkers to walk, wheelchairs to roll. Show them children with no hair, without an ear, without an arm. Take a moment and share all kinds of different. Now teach your child that a beautiful person is found with the heart; not the eyes.

Joel, pictured with one of the hundreds of sunflower plants he raised and sold to help fundraise for his family's upcoming adoption of a 2-year-old girl with limb differences from Eastern Europe.

vendredi 21 juillet 2017