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Scratch and Sniff and More Fun Things to Do

Sat, 18 May 2013 04:44:09 +0000

Stop by here every Saturday for a family activity, a site for the kids, a shopping site, a site offering humor or inspiration about parenting children with special needs, and a site that's just silly or fun, all designed to get you through your weekend with kids amused and spirits intact. Today's list:

Activity: Scratch and Sniff Painting
Kids' Site: Highlights for Kids
Shopping: Strider Bikes
Inspiration: "Celebs Honor Teen With Terminal Cancer By Performing His Music"
Just for Fun: Top Baby Names

'Parenthood' Moves, and More Fall Special-Needs TV

Fri, 17 May 2013 08:00:27 +0000

If you're looking forward to sitting down on Tuesday nights at 10 in the fall for new episodes of Parenthood, surprise! You'll be watching Chicago Fire instead. Don't worry, Parenthood has indeed been renewed, and for a full season instead of the shortened batch of episodes of past seasons. But the Bravermans are moving to Thursday nights at 10 on NBC's new fall schedule announced this week. That pairs Parenthood (a 2012 Readers' Choice Award finalist for Favorite Special-Needs TV Show and a favorite for its inclusion of a child with Asperger syndrome among all the brothers and sisters and cousins) with The Michael J. Fox Show, another program with potential special-needs appeal, since both the star and the character he plays have Parkinson's disease.

As a recent Disability Scoop post points out, there are a couple of other new special-needs-related shows on NBC's 2013-2014 schedule, including Ironside, with Blair Underwood as a wheelchair-using detective (debuting in the fall), and The Family Guide, with J.K. Simmons as a blind dad ("coming soon," says NBC). Have you noticed any other new shows with disability-related plotlines? Looking forward to seeing actors like Atticus Shaffer (The Middle) and Lauren Potter (Glee) on your screen again? Mourning the loss of Gary from Alphas and all the special-needs metaphors on Fringe? Share your TV thoughts in the comments.

All the Big Things You're Going to Accomplish This Summer (Or Not)

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:24:15 +0000

Realistically? Once you get down to it, probably just making it through the summer, one day at a time, is as big an achievement as you're going to accomplish. But while summer vacation is still a short ways away, and there's time to imagine the amazing things you'll get done, why not take a glance at my list of Five Summer Projects for Families of Children With Special Needs. From potty training to reading routines to organizing all those IEPs piled up in a corner of your bedroom, I've set you some lofty goals and provided practical advice on how to make them happen. Pick one out and read how you'd do it, and at least you can say you got as far as planning before life intervened.

_{Photo by Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images}

Why Do Kids Who Need Routine Get Shuffled Around the Most?

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:33:45 +0000

Most parents take for granted that their child will go to their neighborhood school, with all the other neighborhood kids, with a predictable trajectory from one elementary school to one middle school to one high school. In the world of special-education, though, such a stable routine is the stuff of fairy tales. Your child may start at one school outside of the neighborhood and switch to another and another, and that's if he or she is in-district in the first place. A parent posting on the Parenting Special Needs Forum recently laments this bopping around and the effect it has on her 10-year-old:

"The county has moved his mild-moderate special day class to a new school almost every year. Third and fourth grade have been in the same school, but we were just informed that he will have to go to a new school for fifth grade. There will not be any SDC at his current school next year. I'm curious if I have any say/rights as far as where he attends school? Why can't my child stay at the same school each year? It doesn't seem fair to move these kids that don't like change every year. (Plus I have a younger son that is now in elementary school, and I would like them to be able to go to the same school.)"

Making the kids who most need routine have the most disruption -- there were years in my district when no one knew what school kids were going to be at until a week or less before school started -- seems particularly cruel, even though logically I know it's often a matter of space and staffing more than anything else. My family went through a few years of two kids on two different special-education tracks at two different elementary schools outside our neighborhood, and then we lucked into a situation where the neighborhood school happened to have (and hold on to) the track that was best for my son at the same time my daughter was placed in inclusion. The rewards of being at the same school for years, and the same school as your sibling, with enough time for everyone to get to know and appreciate you, are many. Plus, it's easier for mom to volunteer.

Without that luck of the neighborhood draw, or getting your child off the self-contained track into whatever passes for inclusion in your district, I don't know that there's any way for a parent to determine where a child's program will be conducted. If you've had some success at that and have advice to pass on to this parent, reply in the forum and share your experience.

Weekly Round-Up: Week Ending May 12

Mon, 13 May 2013 01:07:54 +0000

Here's your weekend listing of all the new content you may have missed from the past week on About Parenting Special Needs.

New Pages and Reader Responses

Blog Posts

Updated Pages

Happy Mother's Day!

Sun, 12 May 2013 02:39:50 +0000

Celebrate with the inspirational and humorous gifts for Mother's Day around this site, including printable coupons, book suggestions, and Love Notes for Special Parents.

_{(Image and text by Terri Mauro)}

Ice-Cream Bread, Cat Writing, and More Fun Things to Do

Sat, 11 May 2013 02:52:15 +0000

Activity: Ice Cream + Flour = Bread
Kids' Site: Typing Club
Shopping: Lauren's Hope
Inspiration: "Congratulations! You're Mom of the Year"
Just for Fun: Cat Font

Even Without the R, It's Still the R-Word

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:00:33 +0000

Quick sensitivity question: If you take a word that's offensive and hurtful, and instead of using that word, you take a syllable from it and attach it to another word, all clever-like, to make compounds that borrow the insulting meaning of the slur without actually, you know, using it, does that make it okay?

Quick answer: No, you cannot attach "tard" to something and pretend that you're not saying the R-word. Stop that. It's not funny, and it's not nice.

A post on the blog Life As I Know It titled "Don't Make Me Quit You, Jon Stewart" pointed out the frequent use of this unfortunate suffix, which the Daily Show host attaches to a word About.com won't let me use in this space, but let's just say it rhymes with duck. Surely it's possible to make fun of politicians without dragging hate speech against people with intellectual disabilities into it.

Stewart, of course, is not the only person to use that particular construction and variations on it -- it pops up wherever people think they're being creative with language, be it a comedy routine, a humorous essay, or an Internet comment section. (Speaking of which, I'm finding this Twitter feed to be good advice lately.) If only they could use that creativity to think of words that don't insult anyone they're not meant to insult. It's not like they'd even have to try too hard to find alternatives. Or a way to apologize.

_{Image courtesy of Spread the Word to End the Word}

Emergency Teacher's Day Gifts (You Forgot, Didn't You?)

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:03:25 +0000

Psst! It's National Teacher Day in the U.S. Did you remember to send a gift for the teacher to school with your child this morning? No? Well, you could blow it off and be tagged as one of those parents who doesn't appreciate all the things that teachers do. (Or maybe one who focuses only on the bad, of which, let's be honest, there's usually plenty.) If there are teachers you meant to give a pat on the back to today, though, I've got some emergency teacher gifts that can make you look like you were on top of it all along. Pick a few of my 12 Gift Coupons for Special Teachers to print out and bring at school pick-up time, or create a Teacher Appreciation Certificate. Alternatively, you can casually mention that you've sent a letter of praise to the teacher's supervisors, or posted a public acknowledgment of excellence on the Readers Respond page for good school stories. See? You were just waiting for the right moment is all.

(And if you're worried that the other important-person-appreciation day this week, the one that comes every year on the second Sunday of May, might be similarly forgotten? Point your Mother's Day gift givers to my Mother's Day coupon, Mother's Day card, Mother's Day wish list, and Mother and Grandmother appreciation pages for their own quick fixes.)

_{Image and text by Terri Mauro}

Have a Rant in You About Standardized Testing? Share It Here

Mon, 06 May 2013 17:15:47 +0000

Standardized testing, and the havoc it wreaks with classroom curriculum and routine, is a cause of concern for many parents, regardless of their children's educational placement. For kids with special needs, of course, that testing is likely to be more disruptive and less obviously useful, and that makes their parents that much more ticked off. Replying to a Readers Respond query on the topic, reader lele wrote, about her state's version of standardized testing:

"It is understandable about STAAR testing for all students, but when the school and/or district pushes the students to perform their best without any reward for it pushes my nerves to the brink. All these students hear is do your best on the test, anticipate a lockdown situation during testing, we can't move forward if you don't do your best. I get so tired of staff telling our children this. Help them to do their best by teaching them what they need to know to move forward in life, not just for a brief moment to receive funding. For the Special Ed students, I find it ridiculous that teacher-made tests are the standards. No one ever knows what teacher-made tests consist of, and I find it more often than not, that some teachers overstep their boundaries when testing and when this is done, there is no true measure for parents of where their children truly are in academics. What happened to the passion and love of teaching? I just wish the sole focus would be educating and not scores."

Do you have something to rant about standardized tests? Share it on the Readers Respond page. Read my article on "10 Questions to Ask About Standardized Testing," too -- you may find stuff to be mad about you never would have thought of.

_{Photo by Dave Einsel/Getty Images}