By Deanna Picon, founder of Your Autism Coach, LLC (http://yourautismcoach.com) and author of The Autism Parents’ Guide to Reclaiming Your Life has declared Saturday, April 11 as a day for family members and friends to support the parents of children with autism. Apply these simple tips to make a difference in the lives of special needs parents: • Give a well-deserved break.Managing all aspects of a child’s daily living, including personal needs, school activities, therapy […]
LIVING WITH A DISABILITY BY JERRY LEVINSON When Guiding Eyes for the Blind realized that some of its trained dogs lacked the self-assurance to be guide dogs, it discovered that the animals could be retrained to help children with autism. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, a service dog is any guide dog, signal dog, or other animal, individually trained to provide assistance to an individual with a disability. If they meet this definition, dogs […]
BY LAUREN AGORATUS, M.A. Pediatric Starter Kit In the interest of full disclosure, I have a daughter with multiple life-threatening conditions who “coded” and had to be resuscitated on several occasions. So reviewing the Pediatric Starter Kit, which was designed by The Conversation Project to help parents of seriously ill children who want guidance about “having the conversation” with their children, was very difficult for me at times. However, this is an important resource which is helpful to families because, although difficult, this is […]
BY KIMBERLEE RUTAN McCAFFERTY This past summer my family and I spent a day at Great Adventure. It’s the only place Justin, my severely autistic son, willingly stays for more than an hour (I have often joked with my husband that wherever we live has to be within a 30 minute radius of a Six Flags parks.) It’s usually a very fun excursion for us, mostly free of angst, and something I truly enjoy doing as a family. On our last […]
BOOK EXCERPT The Spiritual Art of Raising Children With Disabilities I began thinking of the way mosaics are fashioned from broken shards of pottery and pieces of splintered glass… Think about the way our lives are shattered with that first diagnosis. … How we work and work at gathering up the pieces, attempting to rearrange them into the familiar pattern we knew before. How we keep striving to create something new. Parenting a child with a […]
