"You're lucky," West Island Association for the Intellectually Handicapped (WIAIH) executive director Natalie Chapman told me on the phone last week. "You're lucky in that your child is relatively speaking, is perfect, that she doesn't have any challenges to overcome on a day-to-day basis like some other children. You're lucky."

Full disclosure: growing up, I spent time playing in Natalie Chapman's Pointe Claire backyard with her sons Jeremy and Liam, in the very coolest tree house I can remember having ever seen. Her manner then is very much as it is now – maternal, encouraging and occasionally scolding

So when she speaks, I tend to listen.

"When we're talking about the parents who make up the association, we're talking about a pretty special group of people," she said. "I think all kids have special needs in one form or another, but you can't really understand what these parents have to go through until you've walked a mile in their shoes," Chapman said.

And she's right. That's why -- as it was half a century ago when the first group of parents formed the non-profit association dedicated to forming a support network for parents of children living with an intellectual handicap -- it's so important to support WIAIH's mission.

Even as it turns 50.

But don't take my word for it. Ask Pointe Claire resident Matt Pugsley, whose eight-year-old daughter Allison has Down syndrome.

"They've been involved in Alison's and our lives since she was born," he said. "When Allison was two months old, a therapist (from WIAIH's Pat Roberts Centre) came in and worked with her, to stimulate her and even though I don't know there's a lot you can learn from an eight-week-old baby, there they were, and they've been there for us every step of the way."

Pugsley and his wife have signed up as mentors for parents in similar circumstances, and did so because they know too well the burdens and difficulties of bearing a child with special needs.

"For us, it was the unknown. We had no idea what to expect and didn't know anything about it. WIAIH put us in touch with other parents of children who had Down Syndrome, and we could see the milestones, and we could see that, at the end of the day, a 15-year-old kid with Down syndrome is just a 15-year-old kid, and that was very reassuring," he said, because "(having a child with special needs) can happen to anybody."

Indeed it can happen to anybody. Maybe to you. Maybe to me.

That's why it's so important to help support an organization that has been doing exactly that for West Islanders with little fanfare since the Beatles were still together.

Happy birthday, WIAIH. Fifty has never looked quite so good.