You Never Think You’ll Need Us. Until You Do.
October 5, 2026
When your child is born, you spend a lot of time wondering what their life will look like.
You wonder when they’ll take their first steps and what their first word will be. You picture their first day of school, Saturday mornings at the soccer field and eventually teaching them how to drive. You wonder who they’ll become as they get older and which parts of the person they are today will still be there when they’re 10, 15 or 20.
What you probably don’t spend much time thinking about is whether they’ll ever need Schreiber.
For some families, that answer comes pretty early.
Maybe your toddler isn’t talking as much as you expected, and your pediatrician recommends speech therapy. Maybe your child is born with a disability and you know from the beginning that physical or occupational therapy will be part of their life.
For other families, it happens later.
Your child starts school and suddenly you notice that some things are harder for them than they are for other kids their age. Maybe getting dressed in the morning has become a daily struggle, they’re having trouble holding a pencil or the noise and activity of a classroom is overwhelming in a way you didn’t expect.
And sometimes, everything changes in a matter of seconds.
It could be a fall from the monkey bars or an injury on the soccer field. A car accident, an unexpected illness or a surgery that changes what your child can do on their own.
One day, you’re going about your normal routine. The next, you’re learning how to help your child do things neither of you thought twice about before.
And just like that, you’re a Schreiber family.
There isn’t one kind of child who needs Schreiber, and there isn’t one way a family finds us.
Some kiddos come to us for a few months after an injury. Others start therapy as babies and continue coming to Schreiber as they grow. A child might need help learning to communicate, getting stronger, managing sensory challenges or figuring out a new way to do something that doesn’t work for them the way it does for everyone else.
And what they need can change.
The support that makes a difference at 3 might not be what that same child needs at 8 or 16. New challenges come up. Goals change. Kids grow.
That’s why having a place like Schreiber in our community matters, even if your own family has never needed us.
Your family may never need the individualized care Schreiber provides. But none of us knows what our children will need as they grow.
We don’t know which parent will hear a diagnosis they weren’t expecting next week. We don’t know which family will be sitting in an emergency room tomorrow, holding their kiddo and wondering what comes next. We don’t know which child will need help learning a skill, relearning one after an illness or injury or finding a different way to do something that works for them.
What we do know is that for 90 years, our community has made sure that when a child needs Schreiber, we’re here.
Some people have supported Schreiber because their own child needed us. Others because they loved someone who did. And many simply understood the importance of having a place like Schreiber in their community, even if their own family never needed our help.
If you’ve been part of that community of support, whether for years or just recently, thank you. Your generosity is part of the reason families can still turn to Schreiber today.
And it’s part of the reason the families who don’t know they need us yet will be able to turn to us tomorrow.
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