Time to Change

This week I spent time at two different conferences with people with disabilities and it has me rethinking what are the most important things we should be helping John learn.

We need to stop focusing on things that don’t matter and begin to increase our energies toward expanding John’s communication skills and increasing his contact with the people in his community. While we are working on this, we need to begin to identify John’s strengths and build on those and stop worrying about what he can’t do. We all have weaknesses. The fact that John has weaknesses just makes him normal.

We still don’t know what the changes in John’s life will look like; we just know that it is time to change how John lives his life. We hope these changes will lead to John having a life filled with meaningful relationships and fulfilling experiences because we think most people would agree these are usually the best parts of any life well-lived.