A Prom to Remember
Kayla couldn’t stop looking in the three-way lighted makeup mirror on the table in front of her. Her hair was curled and swept into a fancy up-do and she was wearing makeup — a rarity for the 13-year-old blonde. But it was a special day for Kayla. She was getting ready for prom.
Christian, 12, couldn’t lift his head to look in a mirror and admire his tuxedo T-shirt and the top hat his mom placed on his head, but everyone told him how handsome he looked and his big smile told them he knew it. Regina Shatz, his mother, stayed right by his side. “I’m his date,” she joked.
Kayla and Christian were two of the 30 kids ages 10 to 18 at The Children’s Center treated to a special prom May 7.
“I think it’s just so much fun watching them get ready, just getting pampered. They love that feeling of being taken care of and being pretty,” said Heather Williams, Special Education Teacher.
For these kids, prom is something they might not have otherwise had a chance to experience. They all have severe medical and physical disabilities and need the intensive care provided to them at The Children’s Center. Kayla has cerebral palsy, a result of being born prematurely at 25 weeks gestation, weighing only 1 lb., 7 oz. She can’t talk and moves around in a motorized wheelchair but she is bright, outgoing and laughs easily.
Christian was born with muscular dystrophy. For the first ten years of his life, it was just him and his single mother. Eventually, Christian got too big for Shatz to care for. She couldn’t lift him to bathe and dress him. He has lived at The Children’s Center for a year and three months.
“It’s awesome,” Shatz said. “This prom is something I never thought Chris could participate in. This place is a good thing in every possible way.”
At The Children’s Center, staff members share a credo: “We don’t focus on what they can’t do. We focus on what they can do.”
This was the fourth prom The Children’s Center has held for it’s residents.
The children were dressed up and pampered by hairstylists and make up artists. Corsages were slipped around wrists, pinned to dresses or clipped to wheelchairs. The girls wore bright feather boas and the boys wore top hats. Then, one by one, they were wheeled into the prom, where they were greeted like celebrities with flashing cameras and cheers. A large classroom at The Children’s Center was decorated for the theme “A Walk Down Broadway” with scenes of the New York City skyline built by a group of Yukon High School students.
“Besides having fun, the students got to practice their social, cognitive and communications skills, all the things they work on in class and in therapies. They actively used the skills in a different setting when they interacted with the students from Yukon High School,” said Mindy Cash, special education teacher.
The Yukon students were assigned as “buddies” to the children and as the prom got started, the students led their buddies around to the various interactive booths set up to stimulate the kids. The kids tried on wigs, clothes and oversized sunglasses at a dress up station and watched themselves on a big screen TV in a “movie set.” Other stations were geared toward stimulating the kids’ senses.
But the party really got started when it was time to dance. The buddies wheeled their kids around the room, dancing them around to “The Chicken Dance,” “The Locomotion,” a lady’s choice dance to “At Last” and each child took a turn finding out how low they could go in “Limbo Rock.”
“Just to get to experience something that kids their age are getting to experience. Kids their age are going to dances so for them to get to have that experience is really neat,” Williams said.
After the dancing, a prom king and queen were announced — Kayla, the queen and Billy, 17, the king.
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