DigitalVision/Thinkstock(SILVERADO, Calif.) — A mother from California is helping her daughter accept her difference by creating special Halloween costumes to show it off.
Scarlette Tipton wears a unique costume each year to incorporate the distinction of her missing arm, which she lost because of a rare cancer three years ago.
“She loves Halloween and she likes being something scary every year,” the girl’s mom, Simone Tipton of Silverado, California told ABC News. “I wanted to make sure it was rooted deep in her subconscious that it doesn’t matter that she is different.”
Scarlette, now 3, was born with a rare, soft tissue cancer that claimed her left arm when she was 10 months old.
She’ll mark 3 years since being declared cancer free on Oct. 30, Tipton said.
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Since her very first Halloween, Tipton has hand-made costumes for Scarlette to highlight the fact that she’s missing her arm.
Scarlette has been a skeleton and held a plastic arm as a prop.
In 2014, she was a doll, and this Halloween, she’ll dress as a dead, one-winged raven.
“[When] she was a doll, on the left side of her body I left the sleeve and I put a bunch of stuffing in there so it looked like the arm had been ripped off,” Tipton said. “She really embraces it. She tells [other kids], ‘When I have two arms I’m sick, and when I have one I’m not.'”
Tipton said she has more future costume ideas for Scarlette including a zombie.
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