Share Your Story Feature: Children’s Picture Books Featuring Parents and Care Givers with Disabilities

Written By: Terri-Lynn Langdon

Stack of picture books

As a child with a visible disability growing up it was really rare for me to find media and written content about children with a disability. As a mother to a toddler, I am now finding it challenging to find content that addresses parents and caregivers with disabilities. Often when me and my little girl go somewhere together, I am the only wheelchair-using parent. Representation matters. It mattered for me as a child. I needed to see disabled children being and succeeding in the world and it matters now. I want my child and others to know that parenting with a disability is a valid way of being. 

A Glimpse into the Lives of Disabled Student Parents at the University of Toronto

Originally published by the University of Toronto’s Innovation Hub. Written by Lead Writer & Editor, Terri-Lynn Langdon.

Terri-Lynn and her daughter smiling
TERRI-LYNN AND HER
DAUGHTER, JAYCIE

I am a wheelchair- using mother and a PhD student at OISE in Social Justice Education. When the lockdown in Toronto began we lost access to daycare and we also lost more than one support person (Nurturing Assistants) who felt that their own lives were too disrupted by the pandemic to continue to provide ongoing support to us. Without this direct support neither myself nor my child can shower safely, and I have no means of taking my twenty-one month old outside on my own. On top of which our building has been plagued with significant apartment maintenance issues all summer which has meant I have had to solve big family pandemic issues for 4 months and counting….