Families find community in 'Not So Special' group

Life for Lora Cantele seems pretty normal from the outside. She lives in Gunbarrel with her husband and two teenage children, both of whom attend Niwot High School, and she has her own aromatherapy business.

Besides taking care of her family and her business, Cantele finds herself sitting in a comfortable office every other Monday morning with other moms who are all walking the same path of raising children with special needs.

Cantele’s 17-year-old son was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder when he was a younger. He’s now a high school senior. “His challenges now are more with social interactions,” Cantele explained. “Perceiving how other people feel about things and what they mean when they talk to him.”

She was quick to add that her son is “really sweet and kind, and he’s a hard worker. But sometimes he just has a hard time reading somebody’s cues in a social setting, or advocating for himself.”

Cantele’s son is high functioning so his challenges are not always apparent. “When most people first meet him they don’t realize there’s some sort of disability,” she said. “He found it difficult to assimilate into being in that high school environment. So it was a little bit of a struggle last year. This year has been better.”

While Cantele’s son’s disabilities were challenging for him, it has also posed challenges for the rest of the family as well.

“Sometimes it’s hard when you have a child—not my child in particular—but any child with a disability, as a parent, and you want to go to restaurants, movies or parties,” Cantele explained. “I’ve found that people that I’ve only known for a few months to a year were less tolerant and accepting of things that would go on.”

She is thankful to have found the “Not So Special” group, facilitated by Debra Fitzgibbons in Niwot. “It’s nice to be in a group where I can say something and people aren’t judging you and judging the situation,” Cantele said.

Fitzgibbons, a clinical social worker, has been in private practice since the early 1980s and has been in Niwot for nearly a decade. Although she has a general practice, she has always specialized in working with children and their families around atypical issues.

“What I found from really early on was surprisingly how often the process for the parents of having a child that’s atypical is kind of skimmed over in favor of what to do,” Fitzgibbons explained.

Fitzgibbons started the “Not So Special” group about nine years ago through the Association for Community Living (ACL) in Boulder. According to the organization’s website, the ACL (now known as Pathlight) was founded in 1952 by five mothers of young children with developmental disabilities.

The informal group is “open to anyone who has a child that’s atypical,” Fitzgibbons said. “They don’t need to have a certain diagnostic code to go with it. It’s free to the people who come because the ACL funds the group.”

Cantele enjoys being able to learn from other moms in the group and give them advice too. Although she’s aware that her family isn’t the only one raising a child with special needs, interacting with other families outside of the group can be difficult because they don’t always understand the situation.

“I know there are other families that are going through this,” Cantele said. “I think what we struggle with outside of the group is a lot of families don’t really get what it is we deal with, because they’re not in our shoes.”

Not only does Cantele have to make sure her son has all needed resources and gets to all of his appointments, but she also has to make sure she gives enough attention to her younger daughter. “You feel like you almost have to do twice as much for her to make her feel just as special. It seems like no matter what you do, it’s never enough because this kid always gets more attention.”

Dealing with judgment from other parents has always been the most difficult thing for Cantele. “I think the judgment is the worst part,” she said. “My kid is older… so I’ve already been through the [brunt] of it. I think if there was more awareness then people might be a little more compassionate when they see a parent in a situation, where they’re trying to minimize the outburst or whatever is happening.”

“When other parents or family members criticize them, it brings up that vulnerability that maybe they have done something wrong,” Fitzgibbons said.

Both Cantele and Fitzgibbons know that these children open their hearts to being all-embracing. “A lot of what these kids do, it’s not that it’s all a giant burden,” Fitzgibbons said. “A lot of it is around how much these kids teach their parents about being expansive.”

Fitzgibbons’ main goal for the group is just to provide a place of community where these moms can come together to learn from each other, cry and laugh with each other, and navigate life together. “I’m just so happy that they’ve got each other,” Fitzgibbons stated. “They’ve really developed this whole community amongst themselves. I’m very grateful for that because that’s what I’ve always wanted.”

For Cantele the group is “really a breath of fresh air. We can go in there and kick and scream and cry, or we can laugh our butts off. We can talk about legal issues that we’re facing with our kids [and] we can talk about the school system.”

The “Not So Special” group meets every other Monday at Fitzgibbons’ office at 2nd Ave and Franklin in Niwot. For more information, contact Fitzgibbons at 303-443-0089.