Search Results for: special services
Life in the Trenches from a Special Needs Parenting Advocate
If we can all agree that parenting is difficult, frustrating, and overwhelming mixed in with the many joys of nurturing a young person; then special needs/autism caregiving is like parenting on steroids – everything is heightened. This means that the challenges as an autism mom and advocate often bring me to my knees, and the…
DeVos Hurts Special Needs Families
Education Secretary Betsy Devos eliminated 72 policy documents that outline the rights of students with disabilities. The documents fleshed out students’ rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the Rehabilitation Act. The regulations were not rescinded, only the policy documents put into place to guide how schools could use federal special education money.…
How Kids Can Use Ride Services Like Uber and Lyft Safely
“Mom, can I Uber home instead of you picking me up?” Eight years ago, this sentence would not have made sense to any parent anywhere. These days, “Uber” is both a noun and a verb, and a way of life for people in urban and suburban areas from San Francisco to Sydney. Some parents consider…
Parenting A Special Needs Child: A Story of Struggle and Survival
As an expectant mom, I remember scouring and assessing my child-to-bes gene pool, but like Forrest Gumps Mommas famous pearl, Life is Like a Box Of Chocolates and you never know what youre gonna get! You cannot control who your children will be or what they will be predisposed to (at least not yet, but give science just a bit longer). Any expectant parent has nightmares during those nine months. While numerous tests are conducted in utero to detect any defects, there are many things that go undetected or develop later in life.
The Value of Pictures for Children With Special Needs
Autistic kids are visual learners. They often understand and can handle visual input much better than they can absorb visual or auditory words. Our child has been receiving autism-related services since he was fifteen months old. We learned a long time ago how to help him when he’s struggling, we use pictures. One way was social stories. What is a social story? A social story is a tool used to help a child who struggles to understand their social world. Social stories do this by showing a child a social situation explained in pictures.