Storytime was Even More Special Thanks to Julie Graham

My little Beech was born 6 years ago cleft affected with a bilateral cleft lip and soft palate. Until now, his little scar and speech problems have been a non issue. But, recently he came home from school with a broken heart. For the first time, he was teased by another child at school. They came up to him, laughed and said, "what is wrong with your lip...you are different not like the rest of us" and then they ran off. I am sure that they were not being maliciouse..hopefully just curiouse. Either way, I saw a great sense of sadness in my little boy as he cried and said "I don't want this scar anymore" and as a parent all I could do was listen and be there for him. Then god bless my darling husband and best friend, he researched all of the books out there on clefting and he found, "A Special Smile" by julie graham.

So tonight, Beech and I snuggled up for story time and read this lovely book about what cleft affected children can go through at school. At first, he did not want to read about "kids with clefts"! But... as we read the story, we chatted briefly about his scar and my scar and he got to look at my palate too. Slowly, a new and preciouse door of communication opened up between us.  This charming little book covers several important topics on clefting such as; question kids ask cleft affected children on the playground, birth, feeding issues and all of the medicalization a cleft affected child must go through.

This is a valuable little book for any family raising a cleft affected child. Since I am also ceft affected, I can attest to the fact that there were no resources like this one available to me when I was a child. Sadly, I spent most of my youth answering the painful question..."what's wrong with your lip?" Thankfully , a writer and mom like Julie Graham cares enough to put this answer down in print--I know that this will be an increadible resource for our family and for Beech's school.

A special thank you to Mrs. Graham for writing this increadibly insightful tool--as a mother of a cleft affected child and my own history of a cleft---I am filled with gratitude over her dedication to help families raising cleft affected children.