| Be~Attitudes for Friends of People with Disabilities 
Blessed are you who take time to listen to difficult speech, If I perservere, I can be understood. Blessed are you who never bid me to "hurry up" Or take my task from me and do them for me, For I often need time, rather then help. Blessed are you who stand beside me As I enter new and untried ventures, For my failures will be outweighed By the times I surprise Myself and You. Blessed are you who ask for my help For my greastest need is to be needed. Blessed are you who with a smile Encourage me to try once more. Blessed are you who Never remind me That today I asked The same question twice. Blessed are you who respect me, And Love Me Just As I Am 
These words are dedicated to my daughter Maryamber 
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
ABOUT MY CHILD Remember that he is, first of all, my child.
Let me see him smiling in his sleep and let me think about how handsome he is
and not about how delayed that smile was in coming.
Help me not lose sight of my son in the shadow of his limitations
I know that you care for my child and that you work hard with him.
I need your expertise to help him become all that he is capable of being.
You need my help in understanding who he really is
and in following through at home with things that are important.
Remember, though, that you send him home at night and have weekends off and paid vacations.
Let me have the luxury of having a vacation, sometimes physically,
sometimes just emotionally, for a day, a week, a month, without your judging me.
I will be there for him when you are long gone.
I love my child with an intensity that you can only imagine.
If on a given day I am tired or cross with him, listen to me,
lighten my burden, but do not judge me.
Celebrate with me, rejoice in who he is and who he will become
but forgive me if from time to time I shed a tear for who he might have been. Just For Today Della Thompson Just for today, little one,
I'm going to forget that you're autistic
and remember that you're a child.
For this brief shining time,
I will only see the beauty of you and your world.
I will marvel at the spun gold of your hair in the sunlight.
How can anything be so impossibly brilliant?
I will see the blue-green of your infinite eyes
and not worry if they focus on me.
I will admire your concentration
and not mind that it isn't directed in the usual way.
Your smile and laugh will bring me joy.
It won't matter what caused them,
they are marvels unto themselves.
Through your eyes I will delve into the unseen,
looking at the world with that perspective unique to you.
I will see your lines of leaves and stones
and share your happiness at their precision.
I will close my own eyes
and let the textures you explore overwhelm my senses.
Spinning in circles with you,
I will let go until all is lost but the dizzy.
Just for today,
I will close my books and ignore the research,
the worry, the "shoulds' and the shadowy future.
You are my baby, my son, my love.
Today, we play.
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