Hey, friends. I had another post set to go, about Oldest and the First Four Days— of in person school, that is. We can talk about in person school and the pretzel my stomach twists into when I think about Oldest’s ever-sagging mask (and his huge smile as he gets off the bus) another time. […]

Perhaps you’ve read the essay, “Welcome to Holland“, written in 1987 by E. Kingsley, the parent of a child with Down Syndrome, as she tried to explain what “special needs parenting” is like. I’ve added a link to the original essay, which is an extended metaphor, above. If you want to take the time to

One of the few milestones Oldest Child met early was ‘becoming mobile’. He learned how to get from Point A to Point Way-the-Hell-Over-There in 1.2 seconds by log rolling, and he did it within 48 hours of learning how to roll both ways. (And to think, both of his clueless parents were so proud when

My partner and I thought we were braced for a repeat of the same process we have been through so many times in the last nearly-19 years over the with the latest round of evaluations by the local county team for MNChoices eligibility. It started out the same way that so, so many other evaluations

It’s late, and I may not be articulating this clearly, but let me give this a whirl. Chronic medical conditions, even complex medical conditions, don’t have to be so complicated. They can be really straightforward. Look. Here’s an example. I have a friend who is blind. He’s blind. His retinae don’t register light at all.

This week, I’ve talked on social media about an incident with my oldest child. Cliff Notes version: At the age of 5, he put a putty knife through his eyeball.  After a week long hospital stay, he was discharged home on three different types of eye drops around the clock as well as twice daily

Halfway Down by A.A. Milne Halfway down the stairs Is a stair Where I sit. there isn’t any  Other stair Quite like It. I’m not at the bottom, I’m not at the top; So this is the stair Where I always  Stop. Halfway up the stairs Isn’t up And isn’t down. It isn’t in the

When a Diagnosis Isn’t: the “Educational Evaluation of Autism” “My child was diagnosed with autism.  I’d like to see what services I can get with that diagnosis.”   In 16 years of clinical work, I’ve heard variations on this sentence many times, usually spoken at a well child visit.   Most of the time, I

Every mother of a child with special needs knows, I think, what is meant by “developmental testing”.  Milestones, those all important milestones that we are of course not comparing with other children who are about the same age, and potentially doing more things in other areas with even though they are several weeks younger than

WHAT SERVES US… NOT AT ALL? School tele-therapy in the time of COVID: the four factors. We are failing the Four Factors for tele-therapy. You probably don’t know the Four Factors. I made them up. You see, before COVID, back during face-to-face therapy in the school, I observed that the children who progressed the most