Her love, compassion and kindness is unremitting towards people, but especially towards animals. And lastly, what Amy has taught me is that everybody in my family needs to feel unique and special. And everybody in my community of friends and professionals, the people that I work with, also need to feel embraced by a sense of community and support. And that's who Amy is, and that's what I want you to know about her because my fear is, people will only see her disability, and there is much more to her than that. In sharing my experiences, it is my hope to reach out to professionals who work with children and their parents and to broaden their awareness to include fathers when they formulate early intervention services to families.
Fathers represent a potentially valuable and frequently untapped resource within the family.
Failing to include fathers in family oriented services risks limiting their participation and relegating them to a role secondary in importance in the lives of their children. Often fathers wrestle with grief, isolation, fear and loneliness in their private worlds. Our patient efforts and commitment to succeed in finding ways to foster positive working relationships with them will help prevent many Fathers emotional withdrawal from the family. Fathers will thus be able to take on their portion of the care and responsibility for the disabled child which would otherwise fall upon other family members. The entire family will benefit.