My 17 year old daughter has Mixed Expressive Receptive Language Disorder and a severe anxiety disorder. She has struggled her entire life to be able to communicate effectively. This affects every area of her life. We spent many years in both the public and private school systems trying to find a good fit for her so that she could get a good education and be able to make a life for herself. About 3 years ago, she was completely overwhelmed with everything in her life and we pulled her out of school and began to homeschool her. She would have been entering 9th grade and according to the school system was making pretty good grades–especially considering her disorders. I knew that this was not an accurate representation of her knowledge and so I started by reviewing things she should know. Turns out we needed to start completely over with kindergarten and work forward. We’re closing in on 4th grade now. She should be a junior in high school. She is strong and brave and works so hard. She is also afraid. She worries about her friends with special needs that stayed in public school. She has described terrible scenes to me of the way the kids were treated both by teachers and other students. Things no child should have to see and especially should never have to experience. She worries about the direction public schools are heading in their treatment of students with special needs. She worries about her friends of other nationalities. She worries about the environment. The list goes on and on–she is a champion worrier.
I was really excited about the election in the months leading up to November 9th. I was sure that things would continue to get better under either Bernie Sanders or Hilary Clinton. I shared this excitement with my daughter. We followed the pre-election interviews, debates, etc. Alson with so many others we didn’t see how anyone could possibly vote for him. Then he started to get so much worse. The final straw for me was when Trump mocked the disabled reporter. My daughter was devastated. I had no words to explain how this man could do that and consider himself a decent human being, much less worthy to be the leader of our country. Then just when I thought this was the worst, some of our relatives (including my mother) continued to support him and make excuses for him. I was then a loss for words to explain to my daughter how people who love her can see his actions and think it is ok to just make excuses for him and vote for him anyway. She brings up things like Nazi Germany, treatment of the disabled throughout history, the right to vote if you are a person with special needs.
Since the election, we have had many discussions about what his Presidency might mean to us and we are committed to standing up for the rights of everyone, especially those who are unable to defend themselves. My daughter is unable to participate in a march, but we both want to show our support for not only the disabled community, but for other women, minorities, the lgbt community and to show our concern for the environment, climate change policies, and the ACA. We want our voices to be heard this this is not the direction we want our county to take.