For most of my life, I attended private schools. I grew up taking a bus to a cinder block building 30 minutes away from our 5,000 person town. The bus stopped at a trailer park to pick up students along the way. Not exactly elitism, but still a school where tuition was required. ...

Is she ready?

Penny is five years old. She is starting to sound out simple words. She can identify all her letters and numbers. She can write her name and a few words. She loves school. And she has Down syndrome.

Is she ready?

I am planning to register her for kindergarten today. ...

"Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door" is a disturbing article in Vanity Fair about the young (very young) girls who are bought and sold for sex. And this isn't just happening overseas. The article focuses on two girls in Connecticut who found themselves trapped ...

As you may have noticed, the title of this blog is Thin Places, and the subtitle reads, "Amy Julia Becker on faith, family, and disability." You could use the Venn diagram to place most of my posts in at least one of those categories– every week I try to make sure that at least ...

If you had walked into our bedroom this morning, you would have found me sitting in the middle of our bed. My eyes were closed, my legs crossed in what yoga practitioners call "half-lotus" (and what my children call "criss-cross applesauce"). I was using "ujjayi" breathing, ...

I have a new article on Christianity Today's website, "A Christian Response to Overpopulation." I'm particularly interested in your response to the readers' comments. For instance, is any talk about overpopulation racist in nature? What responsibility do humans have in "controlling" ...

"Mary Frances, what is wrong with your hair today? It looks so weird, you really need to do something about it."

Ah, nothing like going to work and getting beauty advice from a seven-year old. Is this why I suffered through graduate school?

In my work with countless children as ...

My husband Peter is a runner. Five miles is a short run. He runs half marathons. He's training for some ungodly number of miles on sand later in the summer. He does a grueling track workout once a week. He loves running. And he generally runs at a pace of 7 minutes per mile ...

I'm not really losing my religion. Just seemed like a catchy title. In fact, I'm in far greater danger of losing my faith than my religion.

When I use the word "religion," I mean the theology behind Christianity as well as the external cultural practices associated with it. Theologically, ...

Five years ago, I sat in a theater watching little girls in tutus with tears streaming down my face. My response emerged in part from pride—my sister was the director of the dance studio and the girls were doing a beautiful job. But sadness lingered underneath those tears. Our ...

Penny started taking ballet lessons in the fall. She learned the moves and the terms to go with them—plie, bouree, releve. Throughout the year, Penny performed in countless living rooms, singing every word and dancing every step of "Magic Tutu" in preparation for the big day, ...

A series of articles that might be of interest to readers who are interested in topics related to disability:

An article in Canadian Family, "The Downside of Special," written about the difficulties of parenting a child with special needs. The tone of this article is honest without ...

(An abridged version of this review appeared in the May/June issue of Books and Culture.)

Fifty years ago, when Anne Crosby's son Matthew was born with Down syndrome, the life expectancy of a "mongoloid" child was around twenty years. Doctors and teachers called children with ...

It kind of bugs me that the press is paying so much attention to Harold Camping. He's the California preacher who has predicted (for the second time–he was wrong in 1994) that the "rapture" will occur tomorrow. Which is to say, he's predicted that a group of chosen people will ...

Is social media helping create a generation of narcissists? This is the question posed by Heidi Stevens of the Chicago Tribune in her interview with author Larry Bugen:

Q: Start by defining narcissism, because I think it means different things to different people.A: An uncompromising ...