This topic is the second topic on Word Press’ Challenge. I’m skipping topic one since I only agreed to do the once a week challenge. Besides this is an easy one for me to write about as it fits nicely into the core topics of this blog. Thanks Word Press!

I believe every child with any type of difference deserves more credit, but especially those who are schooled in mainstream classrooms. They have to work at least twice as hard as their peers and many of them still excel in the classroom. Some of them are in hostile environments where they endure daily meanness from peers who don’t understand their challenges.  Sometimes they have the added challenge of teachers, counselors, and even parents who fail to understand. 

• Can you image having to tune out noise that sounds as loud as a jack hammer and still being able to concentrate on what the teacher is saying? That is exactly what many children with sensory sensitivity do every day.
• What if you have cerebral palsy and boys on the school bus throw open condoms in your hair while calling you names? It happened to a young child in Florida.
• What if you are a teenager who just reached puberty, you aren’t even old enough to have really experienced the world and other children are calling you gay and telling you to go hang yourself every day?
• What if you stand up for someone and others target you and maybe even threaten your life? All of these things have happened in our schools.
• Don’t those who are different deserve credit for enduring and surviving against all odds?
• For the ones who couldn’t take it anymore, don’t we owe them understanding and a different world, so no others suffer the same fate?

I think we do, so I ask you to help me see that they all get the credit they deserve. Help me to change our schools and our world to a more tolerant environment where people really try to understand and support others. You can help do this by educating yourself and your children about differences by reading books like Delightfully Different. You can do this by speaking up when you see people mistreating others. You can do this by offering a smile or even offering help instead of judging others who are different.