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First off congratulations! I have two limb different children I have adopted. Your best resource will be other parents. My daughter is also missing parts of both legs. One below the knee and one above. She is totally amazing. She walks, runs, jumps and dances (in an advanced class, I am just a tiny bit proud of her!) There are several lists that helped me. One is called I-can, it stands for international child amputee network. I will try to send you a link later or you can search for it. One thing I did for my other children was to show them pictures of some of the kids from that site, they have profiles and you can learn about them. There is also a yahoo group for parents who have or are adopting limb different children. I think the only modifications we have in our house are we have stools in the bathrooms. My son's room has an extention on his lightswitch to help him reach it. I just got it from a company that makes things for babies. he has no legs at all. We also keep our dishes, plates and cups and stuff in a low cupboard so the kids can take thier turn setting the table. We have chairs and stools in the kitchen that they use to climb and get what they want. Because my son has only one hand and is usually on the ground we had some doorknobs changed out to the lever kind, but before we got very many changed he got tall enough he didn't need them anymore. You will be amazed at what she will figure out on her own. We live in a two story house and both of my younger kids can climb the stairs easily. My son uses a power wheelchair at school, but not at home. He prefers his own unique way of "walking" at home. There is a book called "imagine, amazing me" that amazon has that has photos of limb different children doing every day things. That might be good for your other children. The questions other children have usually center around how it happened, (we tell them they were born like that just like you were born with brown eyes, or blond hair or whatever) is it contagious and does it hurt. We tell other children they have to ask before touching someone elses body. Our daughter was young enough when she came home (ten months) that we were able to let our older boys look at her hand and her legs and touch them and ask thier questions. Our son was six and a little more touchy, but by then they had lived with thier sister and so it was no big deal. I let them help him wash his hair and stuff (he does that by himself now, he can take a bath with no help at all, in the shower he needs help turning the water on and off cause the faucets are too high) but helping him when he first came home helped them get to know him. The hospital my kids go to for my daughter's prosthetics and my son's check up also has support groups, picnics and camps. Those things benefitted all my children.
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