What is a Special Need?

Promoting special needs adoption has been our focus since Love Without Boundaries began. The very first baby helped by LWB and adopted was baby Kang, a beautiful baby boy with a heart defect. Almost all of the orphans we help in China have some sort of need, some really minor others more significant. Every one of these children are just that…..beautiful children….but so often children are defined by their needs.

Today in the Huffington Post, there was an article called "Stereotyping Kids with Special Needs is Looksism" by Ellen Seidman . This post discussed how Katherine Heigl and Josh Kelley recently adopted a baby from Korea with a special need. The problem is that no one has been able to “see” the specially need and has commented on how normal she is. What is normal? What exactly are special needs?

Education is the key…..either for anyone may be considering the adoption of a child with a special needs. There are so many different kinds of special needs, some that are visible and others that aren’t. There are children waiting for families with just about any special need in every country, including the US. Because we know how important it is to learn about different needs, to understand exactly what the special need involves in terms of treatment, surgery, or therapy, and for families to decide what needs they are able to handle, we have developed a website for potential parents. This website contains basic facts and treatments for each particular special need – www.adoptspecialneeds.org.

We hope more families will join the Heigl/Kelley family in adopting a child with a special need as every child born deserves a family to love them. What do you think of when you think of "special needs"?

Karen Maunu