The author's son showing passing cars the sign he made sign advocating for people with disabilities.

In late June, a few days before Disability Pride Month began, I took my 7-year-old child on an outing to an Ikea store.

As I filled out a waiver so he could enter the store’s small play area, I noticed I was the only parent present.

It turned out that parents typically drop off their children while they shop, but that wasn’t an option for me.

My son has a rare, severe form of epilepsy called Dravet syndrome, among other medical conditions, and he can’t be without a grown-up carrying his seizure rescue medication, as I was.

The scary reality is that around one in five children with Dravet syndrome die in childhood because the seizures can be so severe. There is currently no cure.

I explained this to a staff member and told her that I’d need to be in the room with my child. She informed me that no parents were allowed into the play area.

“But isn’t there a policy for kids with disabilities?” I asked.

She told me a service dog could accompany a child, but a parent could not.

I stopped signing the form. I said to the staff member, “That’s discrimination against kids with disabilities.” She didn’t respond.

I hadn’t known about the store’s play area before this visit, and I had been happy to see that it wasn’t a playground – just a space with toys like a train set and dart board. Since my son had a seizure at an indoor playground a year ago, I’d stopped taking him to them. But now, even this play space was not an option for him.

My child and I were both upset. He loves going to Ikea to walk through the showroom and eat in the cafeteria – a place open enough that it was the only indoor restaurant he ate in during our four years of masking during the Covid-19 pandemic. We have several Ikea furniture items, including bunk beds, a coat/shoe cubby and a toy chest. He helped us build them all.

Since his severe seizures began about two years ago, he’s had to change his life in significant ways. Heat, sports, just running around to play, illness and excitement have all become triggers for him. Summer is especially hard – on hot days, he can’t be outside. In fact, we had driven the hour to Ikea in traffic just so he could walk and have a change of scenery in a large,........

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