I Want a Better World for My Son

Every few weeks we take Luca to a park near our house. It’s a relatively new park with all kinds of fancy things for kiddos to play on. Swings, crazy climbing structures, a splash pad. So many fun contraptions that weren’t even a thing when I was a kid. 

Whenever we go to this park, we enter right around the play area. We first glance around at the playground, but then inevitably make our way toward walking around the lake. The reality is, Luca can’t go down the slides. There’s only one swing that he can use and even then, it’s designed for bigger kids and doesn’t feel all that safe for him yet. He can’t play on the climbing walls or run through the splash pad. 

So instead, we watch the ducks and fish swimming around in the lake. We point out the birds and bunnies, feed the ducks and just let him take it all in. But at the end of our walks, we circle back around to all the fun, unavoidable play structures on our way out. 

For some, playgrounds represent so much about childhood. Children laughing and playing tag. Going head first down a slide or seeing if you can swing so high you loop around completely. But for us, these parks are a constant reminder that our son really isn’t able to play at “normal” playgrounds.

Every time I leave this park I think to myself, “I want a better world for my son.”

I want a world where he can go to any park in any town and have equal opportunity for things he can play on. I dream of a world where nobody has to Google “accessible playgrounds” and drive 30 min away (or longer!) to find a playground suitable for their child. 

I want a world where we don’t put off dentist visits or getting hair cuts because it’s just plain hard and sometimes unaccommodating for him.

I want a world where when we take Luca to the doctor, we don’t have to weigh him by first standing on the scale with him, then without him and deducting our weight because there’s not a scale that works for him. (Bless the nurses at our pediatrician’s office who’ve just learned to hold him and take this awkwardness off of us.)

I want a world where we’re not afraid to take him to a restaurant with us because we’re not sure if his seat will attach properly to their chairs or if they’ll have room for his stroller. 

I want a world where there are changing areas in bathrooms for bigger kiddos who’ve outgrown the weird puny plastic fold-down tables that are kind of terrifying to put a child on anyway. 

I want a world where I don’t have to go through insurance and months and months and months of back and forth to get an affordable seat for him to use in the bathtub. I’ll never understand why adaptive equipment is so unbelievably expensive, especially when families of children with medical conditions are dealing with so many medical expenses already. And don’t get me started on the amount of time and coordination it takes to get your hands on equipment simply to allow your child to be mobile and safe. 

I want a world where my son doesn’t ever question if he belongs. One where he’s totally accepted wherever he goes and doesn’t need extra accommodations to do very normal things. 

I want a better world for my son. And I think it might just be up to me to help change it.