#FindingDory Review – A Special Needs Mom's Perspective

#FindingDory is the movie of the summer! It has such well known celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres (adorable Dory)  and Ed O’Neill (the determined octopus) as voices to some of the characters.
We took our son as a gift for all his hard work this past school year!
No we will admit we didn’t see Finding Nemo, but you really don’t have to to enjoy the movie.
Finding Dory is about a friendly blue tailed fished, who has a disability – short-term memory loss. She realizes that she has a family out there in the big reef she lives, and sets out on a journey she will probably never remember to find them!
As many of my fellow bloggers will do reviews on Dory and life lessons, I want to focus my review on her amazing parents that never gave up on her.
As parents of children with special needs, we do everything we can to give our child the tools they will need in life to be independent and have a quality of life they deserve.
We spend countless hours in therapy offices, as our child is learning simple tasks like writing, tying their shoes or talking. Tasks that are “easy” for their typical peers but may not be so easy for our children.
We spend countless hours in doctors or specialists office, only to hear “they may never walk or talk”, only to leave with our hearts broken.
We spend countless hours advocating for our children in the schools, so they can get the education they deserve with teachers and aides that believe in their potential. We push for a general education setting, as they are entitled to a Least Restrictive Environment to learn alongside their peers, as inclusion is an absolute must for us.
We spend countless hours getting our child involved in activities in the community, to encourage friendship with typical peers. The same qualities that are embed throughout Finding Dory.

We spend all the money we have to pay for therapies, specialists or equipment they need to thrive in life, only to realize the money is gone and the waivers we fought so hard to get are over.

But we never give up!

We never give up on our child, just like Dory’s parents never gave up on her! They continued to teach her by singing songs to help her to remember important things, despite her short-term memory loss disability. They laid out shells on the ocean floor year after year, believing that some day they will lead Dory back home.

Just like Dory’s Mom cried as “she wasn’t sure if she would be ok”, we worry about our children after we pass, but we don’t give up.  We make arrangements, create special needs trusts, plan for life after high school so they can become independent and find out how to care for themselves.

So if you have been considering seeing Finding Dory, here is the trailer to convince you that it’s definitely an item for your family summer bucket list.

 
Here is a fun downloadable PDF that you can you give to your children to help learn more about Dory, her friends and her environment.

But more importantly talk to your children about the life lessons they can learn from watching the movie ~ friendship, never giving up, respecting each other and their differences!