![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pcdn.disabilityscoop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ds151027_ad.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIt is rare when a big company with hundreds (thousands?) of chain stores does something totally touching and worthy. But that's what happened this year with Target Stores.<\/p>\n
Jen Kroll, a mother of three who lives in Grand Rapids, MI, got so excited when she opened last week's Target flyer that she rushed to Facebook to say thank you to Target – thank you for this:<\/p>\n
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You see, Jen's youngest child, Jerrensia, just happens to love Elsa from Frozen. Here's Jerrensia:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/media1.s-nbcnews.com\/j\/newscms\/2015_44\/834606\/family_2_3c148af6d75b8124d0a44073c8d39027.today-inline-large.jpg\")
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Jerrensia came to her family on a medical visa from Haiti. You can read more details about her diagnosis and treatment on Upworthy<\/a>. But the condensed version is that her hip sockets never formed properly, two years of therapy didn't accomplish much, and the difficult decision was made to amputate both legs through the knees. Today, Jerrensia "walks and RUNS everywhere on prosthetic legs and uses arm crutches to compensate for the lack of muscular development in her legs."<\/p>\n Jen Kroll is very articulate, and can probably tell her (and Jerrensia's) story better than anyone else. So I encourage everyone to click through to Upworthy<\/a> and\/or to my other sources for this article. But what is so important to Jen, as the mother of a child with a disability (and I suspect also as a compassionate human being), is what normalizing disabilities through media and through advertising can accomplish, not just for kids wih disabilities, but for everyone else in the world. <\/p>\n When abled people look at a person with a disability, they tend to see the disability, not the person. Special needs people, special needs families, are virtually invisible to "normal" people. To quote Jen again: "As far as media is concerned — there is a vast emptiness of children with whom she can relate. A Target ad with one precious little girl dressed as Elsa met her where she was and made the world a little more beautiful and friendly."<\/p>\n These sources were used for this article: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is rare when a big company with hundreds (thousands?) of chain stores does something totally touching and worthy. But that's what happened this year with Target Stores. Jen Kroll, a mother of three who lives in Grand Rapids, MI, got so excited when she opened last week's Target flyer that she rushed to Facebook […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":17039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\thttp:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/a-moms-post-about-a-halloween-costume-is-going-viral-on-facebook-thank-you-target?c=upw1&u=6ffb12f2d750fff1c628f4ed4366938bb526f1d5<\/a>
\n\thttp:\/\/www.today.com\/parents\/special-needs-mom-cheers-target-ad-featuring-girl-crutches-t52246<\/a>
\n\thttps:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/parenting\/priceless-target-ad-goes-viral-for-all-the-right-184054339.html<\/a>
\n\thttp:\/\/www.disabilityscoop.com\/2015\/10\/27\/target-ad-model-disability\/20905\/<\/a><\/p>\n