Family Support Network of Eastern North Carolina

Family Support Network of Eastern North Carolina

Parent Resource and Support Group for families of children with special health care needs

May 12, 2011 6:00 to 8:00 pm

Wilson Medical Center – 1705 Tarboro Street Wilson, NC

Auxiliary Conference Room

Speaker: Brenda Boberg

Brenda Boberg, Executive Director of the Family Support Network of Eastern NC, at The University Health Systems Eastern Carolina, Pitt County Memorial Hospital. Brenda began the program in 1990.

She is the parent of four children and has experienced being a parent of a premature infant and within the last few years and the death of a child with a chronic illness.

Come Hear Brenda’s Journey!!

For more information or to register:

Mary Brown, Parent Coordinator

252-290-0862

tmbrown@nc.rr.com

Family Support Network and Early Intervention Services in North Carolina

Since the inception of the Family Support Network (FSN), there has been a working relationship between FSN and the Early Intervention Program in NC.

The Early Intervention Program recognizes that some parents of infants/toddlers may be hesitant to pursue possible services for their child when their pediatrician mentions a possible developmental concern following a well-child visit.

“After all, the child is still so very young, growing and developing every day.  What might be a concern today won’t be a concern tomorrow.  After all, I certainly see more of what my child can do than the doctor did on that one visit”.

Click here for more…

Welcome to Holland

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this…

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!” you say. “What do you mean, Holland?” I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy a new guidebook. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

The pain of that will never, ever, go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.

But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

Written by Emily Perl Kingsley