YIKES! It’s Friday, and I’m far from ready. I knew it was coming, and I knew I was behind…from the beginning. We have a busy weekend planned. I’m headed with KayKay for a youth fundraiser. We are spending the weekend in the North Georgia mountains staffing a bike race (providing water and food at rest stops along the route). For that, the organizers are making a donation to our youth group’s upcoming church camp. So we’re headed out tonight.

By pure coincidence, one of Super Dad’s colleagues as work invited us to his mountain home and a sheepshearing... more

I have the utmost of empathy for a neighbor of mine who I do not know. All I know about her and her family is this: Their lawn is rarely mowed before it is well over ankle-deep, their shutters are in bad need of paint, and their gutters are clogged and rusted. And I know that everyday the special education bus pulls up to her house and picks up her son. He walks out and gets on…he has a hidden disability.

I’ve never met this woman, but I feel her pain. I totally understand how these details of her house here in suburbia, where the manicured... more

It occurred to me yesterday, as I watched LuLu interact with others in the doctor’s waiting room just how she views herself. When we arrived there was a young boy (maybe 5) with his father and twin infant sisters. He was sitting across from us wiggling. LuLu was watching The Aristocrats on the waiting room TV and cheered as the bad guy was locked into a trunk and shipped off. This young boy impulsively jumped up, ran over to LuLu and hit her on the leg. His dad immediately sprang into action, scolding and retrieving the boy back to his chair.

“It’s alright,” LuLu said, “I do that sometimes too.” And she was right. She does jump up and very impulsively react, often to sensory... more

Today, in what seemed like just a few short moments, LuLu managed to kick a hole through the area of wall in the hallway that was repaired a few months ago. (ARGH!) What precipitated this was not being able to find me. I had told her about an hour earlier that on my agenda for today was hosing the porch off to remove the pollen. I was outside wrangling with the garden hose and could hear the kicking, but LuLu kicks the walls or stomps on the floor at least once a day (usually in her room where the walls are reinforced). So frankly I didn’t think... more

Here’s LuLu practicing her passion…surgery! From the time she was little, even before she had language, LuLu was interested in all things medical. (She showed it first as an obsession with disposable gloves.) Interested is putting it mildly. She’s OBSESSED!

Funny thing about obsessions. They are, as Kelly describes in a recent blog, very difficult behaviors to live with. They are the source of much odd behaviors, many meltdowns, lots of turmoil. But, once you, the parent, realize that they... more

Check out Part 1 Check out Part 2

The unique twist to the work that Dr. Purvis and Dr. Cross do at the is that they test neurotransmitter levels of all the Camp Hope campers (and their parents) before, during and after the day camp. To day, Dr. Purvis reports she has reviewed over 900 neurotransmitter tests on traumatized children. She has seen some pretty definite... more

Here’s an interesting, but not surprising, article from the Health Behavior News Service:

New research suggests that Americans are more likely to socially reject children with mental illness than they are those with physical illnesses such as asthma.

Well...duh! Mental illnesses are scarier, misunderstood, less likely to be believed as a “real” illness. Even in circles where discriminatory comments about race, religion, ethnic background or even weight or age are... more

This month’s Schwab Learning e-newsletter has an article on Making the Most of Standard Technology to Enhance Learning. This article is awesome because it tells you of some assistive technology that may be right in the software you already own. No need to buy something more.

The article has tips on changing fonts, font size, background color and other text enhancements that can be made in MS Word and other software. Another tip was text-to-speech readers.

Based on this,... more

Sometimes I’m convinced that LuLu is Goldilock, searching for that elusive parent who is not too hard; not too soft. Me, I’m the pendulum who swings too much one way or the other. And really, no matter what I do, I just can’t win!

As I read other parents’ comments on the listserves it always strikes me that we are all looking for that elusive balance that is so hard. My daughter is easily shamed by any and all harsh words from me. At the same time, she is chronically oppositional – would declare the sky brown if I declared it blue.... more

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day…I have to pay homage to my Irish roots. Ok, they are mostly German roots, but that red hair trait screams out that about 10% of my heritage is Irish. Which is enough to break out the cabbage and Guinness. Isn’t genetics fascinating? Check out the prevalence of red hair in this group!

I come from a family of red heads. My grandmother’s mother is as far back as I know the red hair to go. She had beautiful auburn tresses. Mine has always been more strawberry blonde. KayKay had auburn locks that are not... more