By Dr. Robert Naseef, Psychologist
You Will Dream New Dreams
It’s been 20 years now since my son was a seemingly normal, happy toddler. It’s been eighteen years since I first heard the word “autism” used to describe my baby. It was a grief from which I thought I’d never recover, never feel good again, unless he recovered and had a typical life. It took me two years before I could get the word “autism” out of my mouth. Like the other 62 writers in You Will Dream New Dreams: Inspiring Personal Stories by Parents of Children With Disabilities, my life was suspended in time. Hope was in short supply. When my life resumed, I had a new and uncertain calendar before me, one that unfolded with my son’s condition. This is a parents children with disabilities book.
Finding Company in Exceptional Parent
I can recall the first time I saw a copy of Exceptional Parent magazine in a doctor’s office. I was afraid to open it. I was terrified to consider that I might become a regular reader. Months later, I did open that magazine and closed it nervously after glancing at its table of contents, mortified that I could possibly belong to the club of its subscribers. Eventually, I read it a little at a time, and I found guidance and comfort there. What really helped was the first person accounts by other parents who’d survived the crisis.
I noticed these were people who’d rejoined time, found hope and even joy again, and discovered who they’d become. That magazine has given voice to so many parents over the years. It even helped me, years later, develop my own voice as a father in the Fathers’ Voices column, edited by James May of what was then called the National Fathers’ Network, now known as the Washington State Fathers Network. Eventually I met the founder and former editor-in-chief of Exceptional Parent, Stanley D. Klein, Ph.D., who together with Kim Schive has brought us a new and, I believe, a lasting contribution. Stan has been a colleague and a friend who’s helped me develop my own work further, the same way he’s done for so many parents and people with disabilities I know. I’m an admittedly biased reviewer, and so be it.
What’s Inside the Book
In You Will Dream New Dreams, readers will find real life stories by mothers and fathers of kids with cerebral palsy, juvenile diabetes, autism, intellectual disability, and a host of other life altering chronic conditions and injuries. Their messages resound with courage, encouragement, and hope. Like the other essay writers, I’m proud to have my words included in this volume, proud to be part of something bigger and more important than my own experience raising my own son. Pick it up if you’re a parent, and in each essay you’re drawn to, you’ll revisit and discover a part of your own story. Stay with the process, and you can put together your story and develop it further as life goes on with your family. Find a piece here and a piece there that resonates deep within.
Why Every Parent Needs a Voice
There’s a Native American proverb that advises you can’t understand another person unless you walk a mile in his or her moccasins. So listen to life inside these moccasins if you’re a professional, and you’ll learn how to listen better to parents. They’ll tell you their stories, and in doing so will eventually be able to dream new dreams. This is a valuable book for relatives and friends too, to help them understand the treacherous emotional landscape a parent faces when their child has special needs, the same landscape I’ve tried to describe in healing broken dreams of my own.
Now 62 other parents have a voice. When you have a voice, you have dignity. When you have a voice, you can make yourself understood. When you have a voice, you can connect with others, and you can speak and listen patiently with your spouse. With a voice, you’re no longer alone. With a voice, you can command respect. You know when you have power, and you can accept when you’re powerless. And maybe most of all, when you have a voice, you can begin to soothe and heal the ache in your heart. It’s the same kind of voice I argued families deserve when I wrote about families needing help and dignity instead of punishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “the only true gift is a portion of thyself.” In You Will Dream New Dreams, Stan Klein and Kim Schive have brought us a gift from 62 mothers and fathers. Take a look, open it up, you won’t be sorry.
