18 Celebrities Who Have Opened Up About Raising a Kid With a Disability

Denise Richards, whose daughter, Eloise, was diagnosed with chromosone disorder in 2017, has taken on the challenge of raising a child with special needs. She’s open about the fact that doctors “don’t really have a road map for her particular case,” but she’s heartened by the fact that her first word was “Dad” for Richards’ second husband, Aaron Phypers.

“I don’t know if [Eloise] is ever going to talk like a typical child,” she shared with People. “But as a parent, you want what’s best for your children, and you just do it.”

One of the most tragic things about John Travolta and Kelly Preston’s loss of their 16-year-old son, Jett, at their Bahamas residence was that in the aftermath, they had to go to trial after two men blackmailed the family and threatened to go public with the truth about Jett’s condition. The trial was the first time the public heard Travolta reveal what had long been rumored about his son: Jett was autistic.

“He was autistic. He suffered from a seizure disorder,” Travolta said at the trial in 2009, via ABC News. The couple had been private about their son’s condition and had only shared publicly that he had Kawasaki disease, a blood vessel disorder that causes inflammation throughout the body.

Victoria Beckham stunned the world when she yelled at the paparazzi in 2006 as they flashed the bulbs on their cameras trying to get the perfect shot of then four-year-old son Romeo Beckham at the airport. “He’s got epilepsy…all that flashing will start an epileptic fit… you can’t do that,” she sternly told the press, via People.

That revelation shocked the media and led to Splash News putting a moratorium on photographing the child or the Beckham family when they were all together. Photo agency owner Kevin Smith said, “No photo is worth putting a child’s life in danger.”

Jenny McCarthy has been a vocal advocate for research when it comes to autism spectrum disorders because her son, Evan, was diagnosed at the age of two. Her work in this area has also been controversial because of her insistence that vaccines have been linked to autism, even though scientific research has proven otherwise.

Nonetheless, McCarthy persists in finding the best treatment out there for Evan and considers him in “recovery” for autism. “Evan couldn’t talk—now he talks. Evan couldn’t make eye contact—now he makes eye contact. Evan was antisocial—now he makes friends,” she told Time in 2010. “It was amazing to watch, over the course of doing this, how certain therapies work for certain kids and they completely don’t work for others.”

Colin Farrell and Kim Bordenave’s son, James, has a rare genetic disorder called Angelman Syndrome that leaves him nonverbal and unable to care for himself. The former couple recently filed to become co-conservators of their 17-year-old son to help manage his medical and personal needs. While that may seem like a heavy burden for James’ parents, Farrell believes he’s one of the greatest gifts in his life.

“By virtue of his honesty, struggle, persistence, and his personality, James brings out the best in people. He literally saved my life,” the Dumbo actor said at the 2017 Power of Possibilities charity event. “I was on a destructive path. When I couldn’t make the changes in my life for myself, I made them for James. He gave me the reason to be a better man and father.”

Mia Farrow’s home has always been open to children with special needs. Out of her 14 children, four of them had disabilities. Son Thaddeus, who died in 2016, had contracted polio as a young child in an Indian orphanage and was paralyzed from the waist down. Moses Farrow, adopted from a South Korean orphanage, was born with cerebral palsy. Daughters Frankie-Minh Farrow is blind and was adopted from Vietnam and Quincy Farrow struggled as a newborn after being exposed to drugs in the womb.

It was Mia’s son Ronan, who summed up his mother’s caregiving skills and how she raised their kids to never think about their limitations, only their possibilities.

“I am so proud of my family,” Ronan told Vanity Fair. “I grew up across the table from Moses, who has cerebral palsy, and next to my sister Quincy, born of a drug-addicted inner-city mother, and Minh, who is blind. I could never have understood what it means to grow up blind or with cerebral palsy. I saw problems and needs, so the next thing you think is: O.K., what are you going to do about it?”

Back in 1985, families weren’t openly talking about their children’s special needs, so Sylvester Stallone’s People magazine cover discussing his “silent son,” Seargeoh Stallone, was a game-changer for the autism community. Sly and ex-wife Sasha Stallone set up a research fund to raise money for the National Society for Children and Adults With Autism.

The action star was also at the height of his career when the diagnosis came in, so he was often away on set and struggled to connect with his son. “There is no real father-and-son thing there,” he admitted. “I have to become his playmate. With a child like this, you have to put away your ego. You can’t force him into your world. I sort of go along with whatever he is doing.”

Toni Braxton’s son Diezel, her youngest son with former husband, Keri Lewis, was diagnosed with autism at an early age and the couple quickly got involved with the Autism Speaks organization to seek out programs to help him.

In 2016, Braxton controversially stated on Access Hollywood that her son was off the spectrum and no longer considered autistic. “My youngest son, as everyone knows, my son Diezel suffers from – or I should say suffered from autism. I am one of the lucky parents,” she said on the entertainment show, via Daily Mail. “Early diagnosis changes everything. I will tell you this. I will shout it from the rooftops.”

Diezel is now 18 years old and a successful model in the fashion industry.

When Backstreet Boys singer Brian Littrell’s son, Baylee, was six years old, the family got a scary diagnosis: atypical Kawasaki Disease. The inflammation of the arteries can cause heart attacks and blood clots in children, and is sometimes fatal.

The pop star understood what his son was going through because he had a heart murmur that was corrected with open-heart surgery in his early 20s. But for Baylee, it took several weeks in the hospital for doctors to figure out the correct diagnosis because he didn’t have textbook symptoms. “You feel helpless as a parent because you’re relying on people who are educated about these things,” he told People in 2009. “It’s been an emotional roller coaster. Fans all over the world were praying for Baylee. We felt that love.”

Baylee hasn’t let his autoimmune disease slow him down, he went on to star in the Broadway musical, Disaster! in 2016.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin became a champion for families raising children with Down syndrome when she ran on John McCain’s presidential ticket in 2008. Her fifth child, Trig, was a familiar sight on the campaign trail that year and it invited a lot of love — and a lot of unwarranted criticism.

“Some people have been quite cruel,” Palin told Barbara Walters in 2009. “I am on the Internet and… [have seen] some horrible ads about him that he should have never been born. But, for the most part, people have been so loving and supportive of us that that encourages us and it makes us know that there is … a lot of hope and there is a lot of love in this country.”

Heroes actor Greg Grunberg and his wife Elizabeth were faced with a daunting decision when son Jake’s epilepsy escalated to a very dangerous point. He was having up to 200 seizures per day and needed brain surgery to hopefully solve the issue. Jake’s successful recovery, now controlled only by medication, has made the family huge advocates to others with epilepsy.

“I’m a control freak, as we all are, especially for our kids, we want the best for them, and with something out of control like seizures, you want to do something,” Grunberg said on The Doctors. “How can I make an impact in this community? And talking about it is what we need to do.”

When Holly Robinson Peete came forward in 2007 with a People cover story to share her son RJ’s autism journey, her husband Rodney Peete was worried their public frankness about his diagnosis would “limit his possibilities in life.” Instead, it opened up communication with other families sharing a similar path.

“When I look back and see RJ, this strapping young man who’s 20 and has a job — he’s doing all these things that I was told he would never do,” she told People in a 2018 follow-up interview. “It really makes you emotional, because I can’t believe he’s come so far, and I’m still so blessed.”