Something just doesn’t add up in this report today, coming out of Athens, Georgia, home of the University of Georgia. Seems a university math professor was arrested during an IEP meeting last week for making threats against the school personnel in the meeting. Hmmm…not having a hard time imagining what would push a parent to such an outburst.

Now the paper reports that this professor had previously been investigated for child abuse. Hmmm…again. A quick read of the article works... more

We actually found time to take in a movie yesterday! And being the theatre-minded family we are, Hairspray was the chose for some of us, The Simpson Movie was the high-brow choice of others.

I thoroughly enjoyed Hairspray, having been subjected to the soundtrack for the last several weeks by our own resident drama queen, Kay.

What I didn’t know completely, was the plot. And how much the point of the... more

Velo-cardio-facial syndrome, VCFS, also known as Shprintzen syndrome, is the second most common genetic syndrome after Down syndrome. It was discovered by Robert Shprintzen, Ph.D., a professor at SUNY Upstate in 1978. The National Institute of Health estimates that VCFS afflicts 130,000 Americans, approximately one in 1,600 babies are born with VCFS. but most people have never heard of it. VCFS is the result of a random mutation causing a small part of chromosome 22 to be deleted.

VCFS is so difficult to diagnose because of the wide range... more

I mentioned last week that I’m reading a new book by Anne Ford, called “On Their Own.” Chapter six, in the book, deals with the friends and relationships of your Learning Disabled Child. Reading this book is making me feel rather naïve about learning disabilities. I keep coming across scenarios, that I have lived through either with our foster children or our adopted children, which I didn’t realize were signs of being learning disabled.

Our teenage daughter C came to live with us when she was 15 years old. We helped... more

What if you watched your only child grotesquely transform right before your eyes and you couldn’t stop it from happening? What if your only child was born perfectly normal and then began metamorphosing and you didn’t know what was causing it. What if your only child learned to walk, then one day couldn’t because her body had become so disfigured?

That is exactly what is happening in Danang, Vietnam. A recent scientific study has found high levels of health-threatening contamination from Agent Orange, more than 30 years after... more

I’m reading a new book by Anne Ford, called On Their Own. In the first few chapters, she has been addressing her learning disabled daughter’s adulthood. Not a day goes by that she doesn’t speak to her daughter, now 34 years old. Not a day goes by that she isn’t prepared to intervene in her disabled daughter’s life, if necessary.

While I frequently wonder what the future holds for my daughter with FAS, I readily admit that I hadn’t thought about parenting her into her 30s and beyond. At least I hadn’t thought about it until I... more

While all children could benefit from supervised computer usage, it is especially important when you have children with emotional, developmental, and learning disabilities. Julie, my blog-mate, and I have children with poor decision making skills, examples of which, we frequently share with you all.

Just imagine then, what easy prey they could be for a pedophile or other sex offender surfing the internet. It didn’t really hit home for me until today when I read an article in our local hometown... more

Yesterday in the mail, I received my summer 2007 copy of "Buckner Today", so I obligingly flipped through the pages. The photo of a beautiful baby caught my eye probably because it was accompanied by the words Buckner Orphan Writes Her Story.

The beautiful baby in the photo was a girl, just five months old, sitting up, and smiling. The story went on to say that, she was determined to be unadoptable at the time because she had an eye with a deformity. Since no family would consider adopting such a defective child, she... more

What an awesome thing for parents to be able to say! (And how difficult it is at times.) Juxtaposed to the Benoit tragedy in today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution was a heart-warming story about a young man with autism who graduated from our local high school…with a regular education diploma no less.

Not too many lines in and you realize that this child is not only autistic, but he was adopted from El Salvador at age 2. Now the article really has my attention. I quickly... more

For those of you who haven’t turned on the TV lately, Chris Benoit, an internationally-known WWE wrestler killed his wife, his 7-year-old son and himself over a three-day period last weekend. The news broke on Sunday here in Georgia (the family lived in an affluent area south of Atlanta). But the details are now revealing that the son’s special needs had much to do with this tragedy.

Apparently Benoit’s son Daniel had ... more