I’m writing today about what it is like to parent a child with epilepsy in honor of Epilepsy Awareness Month.

Cerebral palsy, autism, cognitive disabilities, speech and language difficulties, the list could go on. These disabilities may not be as visible to onlookers as others.

Do you believe you were born for a purpose? I believe we all have several things to accomplish in our lives. I wanted to be a Mom since I was a little girl. I got married in 1982 and 31 years later, we are still a good team.

Coaching your own kiddo can be tricky business. Whether you are your child’s primary coach, or you are the coach at meets, I hope these ideas will be helpful. Here are five tips that have helped us, but we are still figuring this out and would love to hear what has been helpful for others.

Parents, I acknowledge the difficult position the IEP process puts you in. I didn’t always, but time brings maturity. You fight with the school on your child’s behalf while at the same time you could find yourself fighting with your child, especially tweens and teenagers. Trying the following strategies should help give you an edge against difficult school officials and also avoid family fighting.

Parents are all over the board when it comes to how they teach their kids about disabilities. Some scold their kids when they ask what’s wrong when a person with a disability passes by, and other parents are totally cool with letting their kids run around and approach us at will. No two parenting techniques are alike.

Since becoming a quadriplegic three years ago, I have quickly learned that people don’t know a whole lot about the disability community. When you’re uneducated about something, I think it’s normal to feel uncomfortable with it. Maybe even afraid of it.

Every memory from my childhood of my mom is happy, loving, warm, caring, compassionate and all around genuine. When I was growing up, I didn’t realize that all moms are not as dedicated to their children as mine was. I thought everyone’s mom baked cakes and cupcakes on birthdays or special occasions. I thought everyone’s mom made time to be at every single event, no matter how big or small. I thought everyone’s mom could sew and was the best cook around.

There may not be anyone else with the same constellation of symptoms as your child but there are people with similar challenges. Find those people. I have never met anyone with all of these same challenges as my kid but I have a strong network within each separate diagnosis. We have made wonderful friends and have found — and I hope provided — a great deal of support within each of these. I just have to pop onto one of my Facebook groups and I’m immediately reminded, I’m not alone.

I have two beautiful, talented, loving children. They have their own strengths and their own needs. They are different in so many ways but also share many similarities. My daughter is a typically developing, spit-fire of a preschooler.