[Source: Washington Post]
by Mari-Jane Williams

This is just great news! Parents magazine, a mainstream publication, has opened its eyes and seen the light that children with special needs are CHILDREN! More of the world needs to begin seeing beyond disability.
The February issue of Parents magazine arrived the other day, and I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the cover. Right there, front and center, is 3-year-old Emily Keicher, who has spina bifida.
Emily is beyond cute and has an infectious smile. She has a walker and leg braces, too. I love seeing a child with a disability on the cover of a major national magazine. Even better, she’s not out there because there’s a story in the magazine about kids with special needs. She’s there just because. And that makes my heart soar.
“Parents is a national magazine with a very large audience and we want them to see . . . their experiences reflected back in our pages,” said Dana Points, editor of Parents. “It’s part of being responsible to the readers. I won’t say that we have it completely figured out, nor am I precisely calculating the composition of the pages every month. But we really do try to make an effort to represent a wide range of issues in the magazine.”
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