Looking Backward and Framing the Future for Parents’ Aspirations for Their Children With Disabilities

Abstract

This article frames the past and future role of the parents of children with disabilities within the context of special education. We highlight their past aspirations: to organize nationally to assert that their children could learn, to codify into law their children’s right to an education, and to foster trust-based parent–professional partnerships. Using the past as a prelude to the future, we then identify two aspirations for the future: to foster empathy, compassion, and dignity; and to “get a life” rather than just “get an education.” The theme of future aspirations is to develop schools and communities where empathy, compassion, and dignity abound and where, as a consequence, children and adults with disabilities can experience across the full lifespan the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s outcomes of equal opportunity, independent living, full participation, and economic self-sufficiency.