Reach Your Child's Potential with Professional Insights
Mornings seem to be a difficult time in many households with children. The transition from sleeping to waking, the rush to get out of the house, and anxiety about the day ahead all combine to make it an especially tension-filled time. Add to that a child with special needs and mornings can be downright awful. [...]
I’ve met some pretty amazing dogs in my life and we have one in our family. His name is Huck and he is a full-size Labradoodle. But the dogs who participate in the K-9 Club Autism program at Austin Dog Alliance in Austin, TX are as special as they come. They are teaching my son [...]
We recently received a query from Lisa, one of our Special readers: “Hi, just wondering if you have any advice on keeping a teenager with Asperger’s, ADHD, and chronic Depression protected from people he thinks are his friends, but who can easily convince him to do stupid stuff that gets him into serious trouble with [...]
Jaylen may not understand a lot of social concepts. He may not realize someone is being mean, or understand what an attitude is, but he definitely understands the concept of being the best. And now he has a bit of an obsession with being the best…at everything. A Competitive Spirit I think having a competitive [...]
Drill, baby, drill! That can be the first instinct when you are a parent of a child with a communication or language disorder. When that child is nonverbal and you so desparately want that child to be verbal. To talk. When J-man was still nonverbal, I dreamed about hearing him say even the most mundane [...]
If you have a child with any kind of developmental delay, potty training may be a challenge an adventure. I’ve been potty training Norrin for a little more than three years. We’ve been through plenty of discarded underpants, stained carpets and wet floors. We’ve gone through bottles of detergent, tubs of disinfectant wipes and rolls [...]
One of the hardest things to do is determine certain tantrum triggers and irritants for our spectrum kiddos and other kids with special needs. Once they start losing control it’s almost impossible to pin down which stimulant proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back… but what if you could nip it before [...]
It’s that time of year in our family, where there is excitement over crocus popping through the earth, song birds returning, and seed packets being sifted through. Since I was a little girl, my family always had a small garden on the side of the house. Tomatoes, peppers, radishes, cucumbers and carrots were some of [...]
JJ, my 22-year-old with ASD, was taught everyday social skills visually as a child through the form of story telling. In 1991, Carol Gray created “Social Stories” as a vehicle to teach social skills to children on the spectrum. Originally fueled by grassroots enthusiasm, she later confirmed this technique as an evidenced-base practice, and earned [...]
I wish I could say my son loved and related to animals, but I can’t. I read about other kids with neuroatypicality similar to his (ADHD & Asperger’s Syndrome) who bond with pets, and I am jealous. My son – we call him Clark Kent – never has. When he was seven, we bought a [...]
