A long time ago, I read that most adults in the U.S. only have two or three friends. I was in college at the time, and I thought the data must be wrong. Back then, I saw my "best" friends daily and my "good" friends weekly. I had dozens, if not hundreds of friends. Even now, ...

When the doctor delivered the news that my ten-month old daughter Bette was hearing impaired, I was stunned.

How could that be? She makes noises. She is playful. She laughs big belly laughs. How can she not hear? There must be some mistake.

But it was no mistake. The doctor did ...

A few years back, I read an article in the New York Times Magazine about a "wrongful birth" lawsuit. A woman sued her doctors after her child was born with severe disabilities because she would have aborted had her daughter's genetic abnormalities been detected in utero. The ...

I was putting Penny to bed tonight and I asked, "Do you want me to pray for you?"

She nodded.

"What do you want me to pray for?"

"Help me control my hands at school."

When I had picked Penny up from school that morning, her teacher had told me Penny was "like a tumbleweed." I can ...

I don't think about it much any more, but when Penny was born, some of the hardest questions to face were those about her future. Will she ever drive a car? Get married? Have children? Hold a job? Live on her own?

Those questions still exist, of course, and they come up from ...

Around 5:30 most evenings, the inevitable question arises. What are we going to eat for dinner? Sometimes I've planned it out in advance, but most days it's a scramble. And although I intend to provide nutritious meals every night, efficiency sometimes wins out.

There was a time ...

I found out last week that my friend Ellen Painter Dollar and I won an award from the EPA (Evangelical Press Association) for our point-counterpoint essays about disability published for Christianity Today online. My article was called, "Considering 'Curing' Down Syndrome With ...

"What? Since when did tard become politically incorrect?"

I felt confused when I heard these words fall off the lips of a character in the 2005 movie, The Ringer, starring Johnny Knoxville. I wasn't surprised it was coming from Hollywood. I was shocked, though, that the movie ...

Listening. It's  a daily topic in our household, and it's one of Penny's greatest challenges. A few weeks back, she and William were visiting my aunt and uncle. Aunt Jane asked Penny, "Where are your listening ears?"

"I left them at home," she replied.

"Don't worry, Penny. I brought ...

"Every baby is a little miracle to celebrate, support and protect."

Is it a trite advertising tagline? Or a profound truth? Take a minute (literally, one minute) to watch this ad for Pampers:

Should we celebrate babies born to teenagers? Babies born through ...

Should atheists in the military have chaplains to serve their needs? That's the question asked in a recent New York Times article, "Atheists Seeks Chaplain Role in the Military." The article discusses the spiritual climate of the military, which it claims is overwhelmingly Christian. ...

It sounds like good news. Researchers have developed a non-invasive test to detect Down syndrome early on in pregnancy. As this new test becomes widely available, it will replace current screening tests for Down syndrome. Any woman who takes the advice of the American College ...

I have a guest post today on Motherlode, the parenting blog of the New York Times. It begins:

Our middle child, William, had trouble sleeping as a newborn. And as an infant. And really up until he was eight months old. He fussed. He squirmed. He screamed. The slightest noise ...

It's easy to be dismissive of children's capacity for spiritual understanding. I've written recently about my trouble explaining Easter to our kids and about our messy prayer times as a family. There's a part of me that wants to give up on theology with our children until they ...

Over the course of the past week I have soothed Marilee after her brother bit her on the arm (Look carefully at the oval ring of teeth marks in the photo to the left. In his defense, he seemed shocked by her tears and said, "Mom, I was pretending she was food"), cleaned up a ...