Praying The Rosary With Special Need's Children

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, because I have a child who has special needs. He was born 15 weeks premature and spent the first year of his life in the hospital NICU. He developed Cerebral Palsy and became deaf during that time and has been in a wheelchair all his life and speaks with sign language.

I did not come home to the Catholic Church until my kids were 14 and 12, I was raised and raised my kids for the biggest part of their lives in the Baptist Church. So they were raised praying The Lord's Prayer and the dinner blessing and that was pretty much it. So when I started praying The Rosary it was something very new to them, my daughter would fight tooth and nail with me, and seeing as how she was older my husband told me not to try and force her to pray it, so I did not push it. My son on the other hand has always had an interest in praying with me, and I love it. I spoke with my parish Priest about it, seeing as how he could not hear what was being said and his sign language was limited, and he told me that it did not matter if he could not understand what was being said, he had the understanding that he was praying to God and that was all that mattered. He said that the Lord knew what was in his mind and heart and that He communicated with him in a way that he would understand.

So everyday when I pray The Rosary he goes and gets his beads out of his desk drawer and comes beside me and we pray the International Rosary on EWTN, I do that because it has different pictures and keeps his interest. I just love it when I see him make the Sign of the Cross, it just touches my heart so much. My Priest told me that God had gifted me with that special boy, and God does not make mistakes. He also said that he had no doubt that God was helping my son understand what he was doing. So if you have a special needs child no matter what the diagnosis I encourage you to allow them to pray when you do. You may not think that they are benefiting from it, but God knows their hearts, and if they show an interest you have to assume that He is making sure that they get what He wants them to get out of it.