Karen Wang is a Friendship Circle parent. You may have seen her sneaking into the volunteer lounge for ice cream or being pushed into the cheese pit by laughing children. She is a contributing author to the anthology "My Baby Rides the Short Bus: The Unabashedly Human Experience of Raising Kids With Disabilities"
Have you ever thought about getting a service dog to help you or a loved one? What about a therapy dog for school or an emotional support companion dog for home? Here’s a guide to the different types of service dogs and a few of the organizations that train both dogs and owners. Service Dogs [...]
Summer vacation means a relatively relaxed daily routine. For my family, it’s the perfect time to model and teach life skills. Here are 10 summertime activities that introduce concepts in social skills, communication, organization, self-care and respect for self and others. 1. Get a library card Most public libraries have some type of summer reading [...]
Did you know that the presence of guinea pigs in a room can increase social behaviors in children with autism? Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia recently published a study demonstrating a significant measurable increase in talking, smiling, laughing, looking at faces, making tactile contact and social approaches when children with autism and their [...]
My son is the type who loves checklists, schedules, scripts, anything that will make his life predictable. But life isn’t predictable. Sooner or later, there will be a problem that he has to solve on his own. Everyone must learn how to adapt. Concrete thinking and rigid, inflexible habits are prominent features of many neurological [...]
My husband and I rejoiced last week when our son achieved a milestone that was years in the making – just shy of his twelfth birthday. Since our son has global developmental delays, his milestones are different from the charts published by the American Academy of Pediatrics. And besides, we have a different way of [...]
Last year, the principal at my son’s elementary school asked me to write a short essay about inclusion of students with special needs for the school newsletter during Autism Awareness Month. I wrote a 450 word piece and submitted it a week before the deadline. She never printed any part of it. I think my [...]
April 2, 2013 is the sixth annual World Autism Awareness Day. To be aware of autism, you have to know what it looks like first. Here’s a hint: it’s a spectrum made of people. Here are my 20 faces of autism 1. Autism looks like the child who is really excited that the President of the [...]
Most people don’t think about the process of remembering until they experience memory loss. But what if the ability to hold and retrieve memories was never there? How do you live life like that? How do you learn? Deficits in short-term memory, long-term memory and memory retrieval are common with neurological conditions such as traumatic [...]
Have you ever wondered why parents of kids with special needs always seem to be so cranky? Or why we tend to make really inappropriate remarks so often? Or why other parents of kids with special needs laugh at those inappropriate remarks like it’s an inside joke? The Life We Live Special needs parenting is [...]
How to Respond to Unhelpful Comments: Top 10 Comeback Lines For Individuals With Special Needs
It happens sooner or later to just about everyone who lives with a disability: someone will say something nosy, rude or truly offensive. It may help to have a response prepared for that day. Having that comeback line at the tip of the tongue gives a little edge of confidence that actually prevents people from [...]