No one wants the words “post-traumatic stress disorder” and “children” to appear in the same sentence. But recent events like the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting are reminders that children as well as adults can be exposed to events that cause this debilitating but highly treatable mental illness. Previous posts in this series explained why [...]
If you watch the news, listen to the radio, surf the web, or read any number of blogs you are guaranteed to come across an awareness day or two. Every day of the year has some type of awareness day or week, some as banal as Potato Awareness week and other dates which are much more [...]
My neighbor recently posted on Facebook, “Talk to me about dyslexia. What are the biggest challenges? Any good do-it-yourself strategies for learning to write?” No one answered. So I decided to help out. Definition Of Dyslexia Dyslexia is a difficulty in learning how to read that is not explained by medical conditions such as far-sightedness [...]
Recently I wrote a blog post called 10 Items Every Special Educator Should Have In Their Classroom. One of the items was Hi-Lo Readers. I heard that many readers were curious as to what Hi-Lo Readers I use with my students. What Is A Hi-Lo Reader? First Let me explain what a Hi-Lo Reader is. It can [...]
While achieving complete independence may not be a realistic goal for many individuals who have special needs, “independence” should be considered a spectrum, just like many physical and developmental challenges themselves. Just because someone can’t be completely self-sufficient (who really is?), doesn’t mean he or she shouldn’t strive for partial independence. Any task or undertaking [...]
When a child is diagnosed with special needs, it’s natural for parents to start looking for ways to improve their child’s quality of life. Diet is one area that can be modified relatively easily. Sometimes dietary changes are necessary due to allergies or celiac disease, and sometimes families choose a new diet for overall improvements [...]
Today we celebrate our 500th post on the Special Needs resource blog. It has been an amazing two and a half years since our first post. From our humble beginning of just a few hundred readers a month we have grown to a community of over 40,000 monthly readers and close to 2,000 email subscribers. [...]
After our adult son’s treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder with origins in childhood trauma, I wanted to learn more about this common mental illness. I also wanted to find a good working definition of PTSD to share with people curious about our son’s story. My search began with interviews with several therapists at Intensive Trauma [...]
Last weekend there was an earthquake on the west coast of Canada and the USA, and a tsunami warning in Hawaii. Now the east coast of the USA is being battered by Hurricane Sandy. How do parents explain events like these to a child with special needs? More importantly, how do parents prepare their children [...]
Many individuals who have special needs are very capable of learning new skills, but need to have these novel tasks broken down into more manageable segments in order to master them. Grocery shopping is a perfect example. There are so many steps and goals involved in a visit to the grocery store that it may [...]
