Everything No One Tells You about Parenting a Disabled Child: Your Guide to the Essential Systems, Services, and Supports

ISBN: 0306831708

Author: Kelley Coleman

The honest, relatable, actionable roadmap to parenting a disabled child, covering topics such as diagnosis, school, disability rights, doctors, insurance, financial planning, and taking care of yourself through it all. 120,000 babies annually are born with birth defects according to the CDC. One of those babies was author Kelley Coleman's. She had to reinvent the parenting wheel. Just like every parent in this situation, every single time. There's no handbook for how to do this. Until now. Told with empathy and humor, Coleman's firsthand experience pairs with expert interviews in Everything No One Tells You About Parenting a Disabled Child to guide parents through the systems and realities of disability parenting. Coleman offers an authentic and encouraging parent‑who's‑been‑there‑voice alongside Letters to Myself, where fellow parents of children with various disabilities write a letter to themselves on the day they learned their child was disabled. With essential checklists and templates, key questions, and expert wisdom, overwhelmed parents can immediately put this guidance into action. Everything No One Tells You About Parenting a Disabled Child is the definitive roadmap to becoming the parents who take action, who best support their disabled children, and who celebrate their children exactly as they are. Feature film development executive turned writer of things and reinventress of wheels, Kelley Coleman writes for family audiences, and developed early versions of movies including Frozen, Tangled, and The Princess and the Frog. As a disability rights advocate and parent of a child with multiple disabilities, Coleman is passionate about writing and elevating stories that feature authentic representations of people like her own son - and looks forward to the day he will write his own story. She and her family live in Los Angeles.