Designing rooms for children with special needs

The experience of raising a child with medical disabilities and developmental delays prompted Rodriguez to add a specialty to her business: creating rooms for children who have special needs.

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“There are so many people dealing with this,” she says. “I wanted to come up with a way to help make their lives as easy as possible.”

Rodriguez recalls seeing Sean for the first time.

“He was very tiny,” she says. “He was 11 months old, but he looked like he was 5 or 6 months. His clothes were too big and his shirt was sagging. I saw a scar on his chest.”

Rodriguez would eventually discover that Sean had a congenital heart defect and a disorder that put him at risk of choking while eating. He also had developed chronic lung disease and gastroesophageal reflux disease, and he had language and social delays.

While Rodriguez was monitoring Sean’s health, she was also tending to her husband, their 12-year-old son, their home and her design business. Like other parents she met in doctors’ offices, Rodriguez felt overwhelmed by her new responsibilities.

“While all of this was going on, I started questioning what I was doing,” she says about her design career. “I’m making homes beautiful, and there are people out there struggling. I wanted to help them out.”

Rodriguez realized her design background gave her an advantage: When she needed to adapt her home to accommodate the needs of a child with challenges, it was easy.

“I have the contacts. I can get carpenters and contractors,” she says. “I know where to look for resources.”

Soon she started sharing what she knew with others.

At support group meetings, as parents discussed the different ways they managed their lives, Rodriguez would talk about the changes she made in her home that made life easier. For instance, she removed all the wall-to-wall carpeting around the house and installed hardwood floors so it would be easier to roll Sean’s IV pole.

In his bedroom, she reorganized his closet to keep his medical supplies close by. She found a bedside table with compartments for easy access to his medical equipment and favorite books. She removed the original bedroom door and installed a pocket door to make room for a comfortable, upholstered chair. She lowered the light switches so Sean could reach them, and she installed a control to the stereo system so he could have access to music. She painted the walls light blue and hired a muralist to paint an image above the bed of a little boy flying an airplane and laughing.

“We wanted it happy,” says Rodriguez, “because there are lots of not-so-happy days here.”

Many kids with special needs spend more time in their rooms than other children, so their rooms need to balance out the unpleasantness they face, she says. Her goal for a room is less about decorating and more about diverting a child’s attention from his or her medical issues.