N.J. high school’s yearbook left out some special needs students. School cites legal reasons.

Glenda DeFabio did what all students do when they get their yearbooks: She flipped through the pages to find her picture. But it wasn’t there. DeFabio’s mother then began to look for some of the other students in the school’s LLD program, a special education program for students with learning and language disabilities, but couldn’t find them. Glenda is the youngest of five, and her four siblings all graduated from Watchung Hills Regional High School […]

Uncertainty Is Specially Hard For Special-Needs Children During the Virus Lockdown

Weeks into France’s strict coronavirus lockdown, Mohammed, a 14-year-old with autism, took a pickax and started hitting the wall of his family’s house. His explanation: “Too long at home, too hard to wait.” The disruptions in daily life caused by the virus pandemic are a particularly trying ordeal for children with disabilities and the people who love and are caring for them confined at home while special-needs schools and support programs remain closed. Mohammed hasn’t […]

Possible new therapeutic treatments for intellectual disability in Down syndrome

A team of researchers led by Dr. Victoria Puig from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), which also involved the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), has studied the neural basis of intellectual disability in mice with Down syndrome and has discovered that the neural networks of brain circuits relevant to memory and learning are over-activated and that the connectivity of these circuits is poor. The researchers have also observed that neural activity during […]

Come for the Coffee, Stay for the Company

Amy Wright started a coffee shop to employ people with intellectual and developmental disabilities – and joined a human rights movement. By Jessica Farthing Who She Is Like every parent, Amy Wright dreamed about her children’s futures – the sports they’d play,  the colleges they’d attend, the careers they’d have. Then Beau, her third child, was born with Down syndrome, a congenital chromosomal condition that results in cognitive delays and an increased risk of certain medical […]

During the IEP Meeting The Ten Common Mistakes Parents Make

by Matt Foley, M.Ed., L.P.C. & DeAnn Hyatt-Foley, M.Ed. When our son was diagnosed with PDD-NOS in 1990, we found ourselves ill-equipped for our new role as advocates for our son. Our first Individual Education Program (IEP) meeting was over-whelming. We found it very difficult to follow what the educators were talking about. We certainly did not know what our role was in the process. We had the expectation that the trained educators of our […]