January 26, 2015

Co-presenter

Today at Support for Special Needs:
Excerpt: 
Schuyler is growing into an advocate for her own needs and wants, although it's not always easy for her. She gets nervous. She doubts the value of what she has to say sometimes. But at the same time, she sees how much people want to hear her perspective, and she is beginning to get a sense of what her future as an advocate might look like. She's taking the first steps into a life where the person who speaks up for Schuyler is Schuyler.
July 2008. I'd like to have that hair back, please.

January 19, 2015

Impossible Things

Today at Support for Special Needs:
Excerpt: 
Doctors and teachers and therapists, they can be a great many things, but they're generally not very skilled prognosticators. To be fair, I don't think very many of them actually claim to be able to tell the future, and I imagine most of them don't even want to try. As parents of kids with disabilities, we ask them to. We demand that they try. Our world and that of our children is already far too full of uncertainty. As a result, we ask for information that our kids' caretakers and educators can't possibly possess. So I recognize that we really do sort of have it coming.  
But God help me, I do so love it when they're wrong.

January 12, 2015

No Easy Answers

Today at Support for Special Needs:
Excerpt: 
It's that time of year again, the beginning of the spring semester, when all the least fun parts of Schuyler's public school experience begin to rise up out of the swamp and demand attention. Soon we'll start worrying about the STAAR test, Texas's state-mandated standardized testing. It's the Godzilla monster that stomps through our little Tokyo ever year. We also begin preparations for Schuyler's next IEP meeting, and the future that it portends. (SPOILER: More monsters, pretty much forever.)


January 6, 2015

A World of Fairness

This week at Support for Special Needs:
Excerpt: 
I'd like to suggest a new attitude as we begin a new year. There's a lot of concern out there about fairness and balance and making sure no one gets anything they're not entitled to. I think we've got that covered. Perhaps it's time for a little imbalance. Maybe, just maybe, the world won't spin off its axis if we worry just a little more about those families for whom the idea of fairness has always been something of a cruel joke. Not charity, but just a little empathy. Perhaps a pinch more humanity than we've been accustomed to tossing into the mix.