Penny started taking ballet lessons in the fall. She learned the moves and the terms to go with them—plie, bouree, releve. Throughout the year, Penny performed in countless living rooms, singing every word and dancing every step of "Magic Tutu" in preparation for the big day, ...

A series of articles that might be of interest to readers who are interested in topics related to disability:

An article in Canadian Family, "The Downside of Special," written about the difficulties of parenting a child with special needs. The tone of this article is honest without ...

(An abridged version of this review appeared in the May/June issue of Books and Culture.)

Fifty years ago, when Anne Crosby's son Matthew was born with Down syndrome, the life expectancy of a "mongoloid" child was around twenty years. Doctors and teachers called children with ...

It kind of bugs me that the press is paying so much attention to Harold Camping. He's the California preacher who has predicted (for the second time–he was wrong in 1994) that the "rapture" will occur tomorrow. Which is to say, he's predicted that a group of chosen people will ...

Is social media helping create a generation of narcissists? This is the question posed by Heidi Stevens of the Chicago Tribune in her interview with author Larry Bugen:

Q: Start by defining narcissism, because I think it means different things to different people.A: An uncompromising ...

A long time ago, I read that most adults in the U.S. only have two or three friends. I was in college at the time, and I thought the data must be wrong. Back then, I saw my "best" friends daily and my "good" friends weekly. I had dozens, if not hundreds of friends. Even now, ...

When the doctor delivered the news that my ten-month old daughter Bette was hearing impaired, I was stunned.

How could that be? She makes noises. She is playful. She laughs big belly laughs. How can she not hear? There must be some mistake.

But it was no mistake. The doctor did ...

A few years back, I read an article in the New York Times Magazine about a "wrongful birth" lawsuit. A woman sued her doctors after her child was born with severe disabilities because she would have aborted had her daughter's genetic abnormalities been detected in utero. The ...

I was putting Penny to bed tonight and I asked, "Do you want me to pray for you?"

She nodded.

"What do you want me to pray for?"

"Help me control my hands at school."

When I had picked Penny up from school that morning, her teacher had told me Penny was "like a tumbleweed." I can ...

I don't think about it much any more, but when Penny was born, some of the hardest questions to face were those about her future. Will she ever drive a car? Get married? Have children? Hold a job? Live on her own?

Those questions still exist, of course, and they come up from ...

Around 5:30 most evenings, the inevitable question arises. What are we going to eat for dinner? Sometimes I've planned it out in advance, but most days it's a scramble. And although I intend to provide nutritious meals every night, efficiency sometimes wins out.

There was a time ...

I found out last week that my friend Ellen Painter Dollar and I won an award from the EPA (Evangelical Press Association) for our point-counterpoint essays about disability published for Christianity Today online. My article was called, "Considering 'Curing' Down Syndrome With ...

"What? Since when did tard become politically incorrect?"

I felt confused when I heard these words fall off the lips of a character in the 2005 movie, The Ringer, starring Johnny Knoxville. I wasn't surprised it was coming from Hollywood. I was shocked, though, that the movie ...

Listening. It's  a daily topic in our household, and it's one of Penny's greatest challenges. A few weeks back, she and William were visiting my aunt and uncle. Aunt Jane asked Penny, "Where are your listening ears?"

"I left them at home," she replied.

"Don't worry, Penny. I brought ...

"Every baby is a little miracle to celebrate, support and protect."

Is it a trite advertising tagline? Or a profound truth? Take a minute (literally, one minute) to watch this ad for Pampers:

Should we celebrate babies born to teenagers? Babies born through ...