The 'Holland Moments' of Parenting a Child

Your professional network can help you unlock new opportunities, so it’s important to build and foster your professional relationships. We’ve seen an increase of 55% in conversations among connections on LinkedIn over the past year, and expect that to continue as people focus on reconnecting and engaging with people in their existing network. If your network is filled with people you know personally, it is real and usable, and every connection has the potential to impact your professional life positively, whether that’s a job recommendation, an introduction or career advice.

With this said, I am all about building my network and bringing about new ideas. A recent new connection?engaged with a post of mine because of our commonalities.

In her own words:

My daughter age 12, has autism. There is our relationship foundation! ?? I saw your son and I thought instant connection. It has been a struggle for my daughter educationally and with life in general. How has your “Holland” experience been like??

In explaining the "Holland" location, this connection shared a poem with me that was very touching.

Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip- to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills.... and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things... about Holland.

With this said, I wanted to introduce a great connection in Emily Fell . Her company, WDTS (Website Design That Shines) creates sites that shine for our stars (clients) that are functional, easy to navigate so you can get what you came for efficiently. We promote visibility of your business and ultimately solutions for your customers! We are NOT your typical, boring, black and white, cookie cutter web biz, we break the rules of design, while still ensuring accessibility for all!

WDTS will brighten the lives of the autism community by donating 10% of every website package sold to an autism organization. It will either be the client’s choice of which organization gets the donation or if they got the referral from a certain organization we can donate to that organization. Or I will have a spotlight on one autism organization a month.

So, What is your "Holland" moment? Please share.