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APRIL 2004

Reflections from a Different Journey:
What Adults with Disabilities Wish All Parents Knew
by Stanley D. Klein, Ph.D., & John D. Kemp, Co-Editors

Most parents of children with disabilities lack personal experience with adults with disabilities. Hearing from people who have lived the disability experience can provide all parents with essential information about the possibilities for their children. Reflections from a Different Journey (McGraw-Hill, April 2004; Hardcover, $18.95) edited by Stanley D. Klein, Ph.D., and John D. Kemp, includes forty inspiring and realistic essays written by successful adult role models who share what it is like to have grown up with a disability.

Each eloquently written essay is an insightful source of wisdom, inspiration, and emotional support as well as a rare glimpse inside the lives and minds of people with many different disabilities—cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, autism, learning disabilities, deafness, blindness, mental illness, developmental disabilities, spina bifida, muscular dystrophy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, congenital amputation, and chronic health conditions.

In preparing their essays, the authors were asked to write about something they wished their own parents had read or been told while they were growing up. The essays, which demonstrate that, first and foremost, people with disabilities are human beings with the same needs and desires as people without disabilities, are arranged thematically: "Love and Accept Me as I Am" essays express appreciation for parents who provided unconditional love and a sense of belonging and who accepted them as whole people-including that part of them considered to be a disability.

"Parents Are the Most Important Experts" essays describe how their parents addressed their unique needs and became the most important experts in their lives.

"Parental Expectations" essays present different approaches to expectations and standards and encourage every child to have hopes and aspirations.

"Sexuality" essays explore how all children need to talk about and learn about intimacy and sexuality.

"Education About Disability" essays explain the importance of why parents and children need to learn all about a child's disability and how to facilitate necessary accommodations so that each child can enjoy a full life.

The foreword is written by Marlee Matlin, the Academy Awarding winning actress who is deaf. The Afterword is written by the book's co-editor, John D. Kemp, a successful attorney and advocate, who was born without arms and legs.

Brimming with a wealth of life-affirming lessons, Reflections from a Different Journey offers many specific suggestions for parents as well as older children with disabilities, family members, and the education and health care professionals who serve them.

Stanley D. Klein, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and frequent speaker to parents and health care and education professionals from Brookline, Massachusetts, has worked with children with disabilities and their parents for fifty years and has received numerous national awards for his work. A co-founder and former editor-in-chief of Exceptional Parent magazine, Dr. Klein has co-edited many books on children with disabilities. John D. Kemp is a successful Washington, DC attorney and lifelong advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. With the law firm of Powers, Pyles, Sutter & Verville, P.C., Kemp represents the legal and professional interests of a wide range of for-profit companies and not-for-profit organizations. Kemp has been recognized for his work on behalf of people with disabilities, including service as the 1960 National Easter Seals Poster Child, 1991 membership in the Horatio Alger Award of Distinguished Americans, the Freedom of the Human Spirit Award from the International Center for the Disabled and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws and the Distinguished Alumni Fellow Award from his alma mater, Washburn University Law School. "These essays will educate, inform and entertain every parent who wants to know how to be the very best parent each can be," said Senator Robert Dole.#

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