What Raising a Child With a Disability Has Taught Me
Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.
Patty and I have two adult children. Briana, our eldest, is married and has a beautiful daughter. Trevor, our youngest, is single, and has a loveable dog.
At age 6, Trevor was diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), a high-functioning form of autism. At the time, the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-4) divided autism into five categories (Source: Healthline.com):
- Autistic Disorder
- Rett Syndrome
- Asperger’s Syndrome
- Childhood Disintegrative Disorder
- PDD-NOS
The DSM has since done away with the categories and now just calls it Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), about 1 in 36 children have been identified with ASD and ASD is four times more common in boys than girls. More broadly speaking, the CDC also reports that one in four adults have some type of disability.
Before we had kids, we never envisioned having a child with a disability, and at the time very little was publicly known about autism. As a professional, I had grand plans for a career as a successful corporate executive.
Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men…
As Trevor entered middle school, Patty and I decided he would need a more focused teaching method and a different environment than the traditional public school he would otherwise attend. We decided to …
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