When Jamie Sumner walks through the store with her son Charlie, it isn’t often that they see advertising featuring kids that look like Charlie.
That’s because Charlie has special needs.
“I wandered into Target on a Wednesday afternoon for the same reason any mother does—to hit up Starbucks and the dollar bins and the sales rack all while my son, Charlie, played with a toy we would be ‘renting’ for the duration of this visit,” she wrote in a blog post.
“Charlie is 6 and tall for his age, like Gumby tall, and Target is one of the few places he still fits buckled into the top of the shopping cart. Charlie also has cerebral palsy, and so I count it as a win when I don’t have to haul his wheelchair out of the van and try to steer both him and the cart like pinballs down the aisle.”
But this shopping trip would be different, and not just because they didn’t need the wheelchair.
This time Charlie would be taking note of the advertisements around him and finally saw an ad with a boy who was more like him.
“We had just rounded the women’s accessories (yes, I did buy that $19 watch) and were on our way to the toy section when a sign above the kids’ clothing caught my eye. At first, I couldn’t figure out why. But then it happened . . . Charlie smiled and clapped and pointed at it,” Sumner recalled.
“He laughed and signed ‘more’. The boy on the sign in the trendy camo pants and cap also had a walker. I had paused because I had seen our ‘normal’ in a place I had never seen it before.”
She later sh0uted out Target on social media for their inclusive campaign.
“I watched Charlie watch the sign. I watched the recognition of kin for kin, like for like. And it was beautiful. Yes, I started crying in the aisle. Yes, other people stopped and looked. And then they looked at the sign and they smiled. It was such an unexpected moment of connectedness among strangers in the middle of Target in the middle of a week on an otherwise ordinary day,” Sumner recalled.
“I spend so much mental, emotional, and physical effort making sure Charlie is included at school, at church, on the playground, and at the restaurant that it was with a surreal sense of relief that I realized here, at least, he already was. It was like finding that Caroline Cart at Kroger or that handicap swing at the park—it was evidence that someone had gone before and made a way for us.”
Sumner was just so relieved that she didn’t have to fight for something and that “for once, a track had already been laid.”
“We took our time in the toy aisle that day and we made three trips past the sign so Charlie could wave at it. It sounds like such a small thing, but for us it is a nod from the world that we are being acknowledge and supported,” Sumner said.
Sumner said she was overwhelmed by the gesture and hopes to see more outlets be more inclusive.
“It’s just the beginning, I hope. I hope more disabilities and special needs pop up in clothing ads and commercials and on mainstream tv. But for now, I am so grateful to Target for making a start and for making us feel at home.”
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