Have you ever been told that your unborn child has a birth defect? I have.
I don’t love him less because of it, I simply love him enough to wish he hadn’t been born missing an organ. There isn’t much worse as a parent than knowing your child has a problem you can’t fix, especially when they are tiny, newborn, and helpless. We want our children to have good lives, and even though struggles, emotional or physical, are part of life, we certainly wouldn’t wish them upon our kids. It seems illogical that someone would say they hope for an unhealthy child.

Eric, if my kid was deaf I would get cochlear implants.
I just think there is a fine line between wishing the best for your children and wishing they were different. If you really love them, you have to stop and think about whether they will feel that love if they feel you wish they were different.

I think you may have hit on what’s causing our disagreement.

Of course a parent should love a child the same whether it’s healthy or not. But I don’t see wishing a child were healthier as a rejection of the child.

Maybe it’s just my way of thinking. The reason I responded so strongly is it looked to me when i first read your post as if you were endorsing the same type of logic that leads some people in the deaf community to reject the idea of cochlear implants or to intentionally try to have deaf children. (How dare anyone try to take the deafness away and “cure” deaf people?) I think that’s an extremely wrongheaded approach in the deaf community, and I don’t think it makes much sense in other contexts.

When I was on my mission, I lived next door to a family that had an adult son who was autistic to the point that his only verbal communication was a sort of groan. I’m sure his mother loved him. From my point of view, there would be nothing wrong in her wishing he could actually talk. I would not think she loved her son any less just because she wished to hear her son speak to her.

Eric, I’ve already responded somewhat, but I want to keep responding to this statement. I think parents should do their best with what they have to work with (resources, medical intervention, circumstances, etc.) and give the best future possible for their child. However, our children’s futures are not perfect.
In the July Ensign there is an article about a girl who was raped. This tragedy caused many problems in her life. Her parents had to adjust their mindset about their daughter’s future. When life “happens” you have to change your idea of your child’s future. You can’t hold on to the dreams you had before your children were even born.
Perhaps this is a no-brainer for some parents. But for others they have to face this idea that their children aren’t perfect and their children will have pain and experience failures and disappointments.

I don’t want to look at my children and think that “If only he was better at ……” or “If only she wasn’t so……”

I go ahead and give my children all the advantages I can. They smell like trout because I give them fish oil because it helps the brain. But speech therapy or fish oil or a cure isn’t the point of my post. The point of my post is that whether my son goes through life with no speech therapy or with an operation that cures him, he is my son and will experience his life from his own viewpoint.
My daughter has tons of energy and initiative. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. My son is less assertive. This can be a good thing and a bad thing.
I have multiple children. If I wished away their weaknesses and could give them all the same strengths, I would have clones. They are individuals, though, and I love their whole package. I think that we should remember that when wishing things away.

I’m afraid I have to disagree.

Your son’s weaknesses may shape him, but they are not an essential part of his identity. If those weaknesses were to disappear spontaneously, would you say, “This is no longer my child?” I don’t think so.

Look at the opposite situation: Assume you had a child who was permanently injured in an accident. The weaknesses resulting from the accident would influence the person that child would become. Would that child somehow be less your child because their development takes a different course after the accident than it would have otherwise? I don’t think so.

Helen Keller developed to be the person she was due to her blindness and deafness. If she hadn’t gotten that infaction as a small child, her life would have been very different. Yet if a cure for her blindness and deafness had been found, I would not ask her mother how dare she try to “cure” her child.

In John 9, the Savior healed the sight of a man who was born blind. Did that man stop being who he was? No–his life had been shaped by being blind to that point, and that past would continue to affect him in the future. But his future development would also be affected by his having sight.

Change comes to people’s lives. If a cure for a child’s weaknesses is found, something that would allow the child wider opportunities in this life, it doesn’t change who the child is. It doesn’t take away a child’s past successes and failures. It changes what strengths and weaknesses–what successes and failured–will affect the child’s future development. And for that, I think a parent can dare to wish a child’s future to be different than it might otherwise be.