Now that IEP season is upon us, we all need a little levity. I ran across this post on one of my favorite blogs, the Special Education Blog. While usually this blog teaches me a great deal about the world of special education law, this time, it just warmed my heart and tickled my funny bone.

Something desperately needed if you're headed into an IEP meeting in the coming days...

ENJOY!

My latest read has been Building a Joyful Life with your Child who has Special Needs by Nancy J. Whiteman and Linda Roan-Yager. This delightful book is so practical for parents trying to work through their feelings about parenting a special child.

The book is structured to include fabulous quotes and stories from parents of children with a wide variety of disabilities. Each chapter also includes exercises to help you explore your thoughts and feelings and develop the... more

Today was a lost day. It started around 8 pm last night, when we were returning home from another fast-moving weekend and hoping to tie up some loose ends before the new week started.

We had been to dinner with Kay’s youth group and all was fine. LuLu went to the bathroom and then cried out: “Hey, Mom, you gotta see this!”

What I found was such an overwhelming amount of blood and stool that it was difficult to appear calm. (Sorry to be so graphic, but it was down right scary). LuLu didn’t appear distraught, so I just played it cool, helped her clean... more

This morning I awoke thinking about the Simon/Peter renaming. Peter was so unlike a rock when Jesus called him that, yet it was exactly who he became – the rock upon which the Christian church was built.

There is such power in what you are called to do and to become.

I confessed on a comment on Sandra’s blog this morning that I’m super shy! We’re talking 10 out of 10 on the Myers-Briggs introvert scale. I used to pay my sister money to go talk to the store... more

When a topic shows up in my world through more than one avenue, my internal radar goes off. Perhaps this is a lesson I’m supposed to be learning now. The idea of naming (labeling) someone and how that affects them came up three times yesterday.

This is the tangent that occurred to me as I was reading the article about Developmental Trauma Disorder and Dr. van der Kolk’s efforts to include this as a new diagnosis in the DSM.

Dr. van... more

Over on Nancy’s blog, canines are getting quite a bit of airtime. And frankly, I come from a large family of dog lovers myself. Before my children were born, I had dogs that filled that nurturing void, dogs I shuffled off to obedience class and took with me everywhere.

But it's time to talk feline. Nearly 10 years ago, Squealer came into our lives. As with most of my other pets, it was accidently-- I wasn't searching for a cat. The ones I have purposely sought after (i.e.... more

It’s not easy for me to stay off roller coasters. In real life, I love them. I’m the first person in my family to campaign for a season’s pass to Six Flags so I can ride the roller coasters. Only KayKay shares my passion, so if we do go to Six Flags the rest of the family stands sweating on the asphalt as we fly like Superman or Batman depending on which end of the park we’re on.

But the “other kind” of roller coaster…the one where you follow your special needs child’s progress and backsliding…now that’s a roller coaster I wish... more

This weekend my house will filled with “normal”. Frankly, that doesn’t happen very often. We do not live an orderly, quite, predictable, “normal” life. We hosted the girls from our church’s youth group for dinner Saturday night. The youth were on a “retreat” of sorts through a program called D-Now (Disciple-Now). Our church was the host of over 350 youth from area churches. They met for group sessions with a dynamic speaker and band. Then they broke out into gender-specific smaller groups by church. While we were not the host home for spending... more

Check out Amazing Amanda Part 1 Part 2

But I also question what will change for LuLu regardless of the labels we stick on her. After all, a case can be made for so many labels. “Just open the DSM and point,” her psychiatrist jokes, “and almost... more

Check out Amazing Amanda Part 1

So many questions about whether LuLu has autism or not…how will we ever sort it out? LuLu is obsessed with the numbers 4, 10 and sometimes 8 on digital clocks. Sometimes she’ll sing her “Ta, ta” song followed by “I love the 4” as she stares at a digital clock out of the corner of her eye. She used to flap her hand in front... more