The Blessing and The Burden

by Barbara Swoyer Several months ago, my son turned 22.  I felt grateful, lucky and blessed.  I also felt apprehensive and overwhelmed.  Like many other parents of children with special needs, it was a day that I dreaded, the day when my child would lose the entitlement of school and related services. Reaching this milestone meant that he was continuing to beat the odds against a progressive disease and the prognosis of a limited life […]

Renovating Our Home and Our Lives for Cerebral Palsy

by Jamie Sumner To renovate a home is to renovate a life. Until we began to carve out our home to make it accessible to our son with cerebral palsy, I did not know I could plan his path to freedom or how I would feel once he took it. The fact is, Charlie has outgrown this life we have built. The cerebral palsy that felt first like an anchor holding him back, now seems simply […]

Understanding Your Child’s Medications

By Caitlin Hoff As a parent or caretaker of a child with special needs, it can sometimes be overwhelming to speak with doctors or healthcare professionals. In the beginning, the medical jargon can seem like a foreign language preventing you from fully understanding the situation your child is in. It can be incredibly overwhelming when you simply want to know that your child is safe and in good hands. Over time, however, this dialogue will […]

SPECIAL NEEDS PARENTING: AWARENESS OF REALITY AND COMMITMENT

One of the most common things people say to me is, “I don’t know how you do it. I could never be a special needs parent. There is a reason Maya was given to you and not me.” Well, I have news for all of those people. I have no super powers or special training. I don’t believe special kids are given to special people. It’s random. Nothing in my life before February 9, 2016 […]

Autism in the 1990s

By Maxine Rosaler When the psychologist who was testing our son for developmental disabilities said that his problems were “neurological” and had not been caused by “bad parenting,” as my husband and I had been led to believe by the therapist we had been seeing, autism had not yet achieved its current penetration into the American mind. People were not yet excusing minor social errors by explaining, casually, “I’m a little autistic”; nor was everyone […]