Parenting a developmentally disabled child in day-to-day life

Pastor Jimmy Bartz offers advice to parents who have a developmentally disabled child
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Parenting a developmentally disabled child in day-to-day life

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Parenting a mentally retarded child or a developmentally disabled child is not easy. There's sort of an old tale that gets retold within the community of special needs parents that you get on a plane bound for London, but you wake up in Mumbai. It's such a different experience. And it's not that there's anything wrong with the experience, but the experience is so different from what you expect or you imagine. So if I was communicating anything to parents who have just received a diagnosis like this or engaging the challenges around parenting a mentally retarded or developmentally disabled child, I would say hold in place each location, whether it's London or Mumbai, each child, whether they're regularly developing or they have special needs, is a wonderful gift, both fraught with challenge and fraught with joy. Seek out opportunities to cultivate joy both in your children's lives and in your parenting practices.

Pastor Jimmy Bartz offers advice to parents who have a developmentally disabled child

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Jimmy Bartz

Priest

Jimmy serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Prior to coming to Jackson, he was the founder and priest at Thad’s, an emergent Episcopal Church in the Santa Monica, California, in the Diocese of Los Angeles. He has also served as the Campus Missioner at the University of Texas in Austin, at All Saints’ in Austin, Texas, and All Saints’ Parish in Beverly Hills, California. He is a graduate the University of Texas at Austin and Virginia Theological Seminary. Presently, he serves as the Chair of the Board of the Episcopal Evangelism Society, and in years past has worked with Red Bull High Performance teaching athletes spiritual disciplines, with Naval Special Warfare working to create systems for character development within special operations teams, and was a speaker at TEDx, Venice Beach.
Married to Cindy and dad to Jas and Jade, the Bartz family loves to spend time outside mountaineering, skiing, fly-fishing, hunting and surfing.  Jimmy is currently writing a book on the spirituality of risk.

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