Free Disability Awareness Activities for Kids

July 31, 2013 by 1 Comment

As a parent of a child with Autism I am anxious for the start of the school year. As much as I worry about how well my son will do, I worry even more about how others will treat him and accept him. I was really excited to get an email from Easter Seals about their free FRIENDS WHO CARE® disability awareness program that helps parents and educators teach kids about children and adults with disabilities. My hope is that every parent will teach their child compassion and acceptance for others.

Sponsored by long-time Easter Seals partner, Friendly’s Restaurants, LLC, FRIENDS WHO CARE is an interactive program that helps students learn how kids with disabilities go to school, make friends and play. It encourages kids to accept their peers with disabilities as people first, and to find ways to include everyone in school and after-school activities.

FRIENDS WHO CARE® is also fun! The curriculum explores a range of disabilities and includes specially crafted learning activities, hands-on exercises, guided discussions and guest speakers. It starts with an introduction to disability, and looks at vision, hearing, and physical disabilities and then at learning disabilities including ADHD, autism and intellectual disabilities.

Visit their Web site to download the free FRIENDS WHO CARE materials!

Filed Under: ADHD, Autism, Back To School, Special Education, Special Needs Tagged With: , , , , ,

Holding On- A Guest Post For Caretakers Of Those With Disabilities

November 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This is an excerpt from Caroline McGraw’s book for caregivers, Your Creed of Care: How to Dig for Treasure in People (Without Getting Buried Alive). To receive your complimentary copy of the book via email, visit Caroline’s blog for caregivers, A Wish Come Clear.

Pitfall #7: Holding On

I’m not a parent, so I can only imagine how difficult it must be: letting a babysitter watch your kids, letting them go off to school, to college, to the wider world. Add to that a child with a physical or intellectual disability, and the letting-go gets even more difficult. To let go, to trust another person with your child or sibling? It may seem impossible. Yet, it’s also extremely valuable, both for you and the person you love and care for.

I remember riding with my parents the first time we dropped my brother Willie off for a respite weekend. He’d be spending two days with a group in a local hotel, going to game nights and swimming in the pool. I knew that Willie would have a great time. Even so, I felt a rush of protectiveness and near-panic as he exited the car. I kept feeling a need to check on him, to make sure he was all right. I could tell that my mom felt this need even more than I did. Though she’d met the staff and talked to my brother extensively and prepared long lists of Willie’s routines and double-checked his food, clothes and medication supplies, she still felt anxious. She’d done all she could, but it all felt so insignificant as he disappeared from our sight. We all wanted to hold on to him as we drove away.

After that experience, I understand why one woman I know literally left the country after her brother came to L’Arche [a faith-based non-profit organization that creates homes where people with and without intellectual disabilities share life in community, where I served as a caregiver for five years]. She knew that, if she stayed within driving distance, she’d be sure to meddle with his care. As my mother did for my brother, this woman made extensive preparations to ensure that her brother would be well cared-for. However, when the moment to let go of her brother’s care came, she felt a strong temptation to hold on.

I’ve met other families who have held on to their children tightly over the years. They continue to treat their adult sons and daughters as children. These parents are holding on to their role as primary caregivers, even as their sons and daughters are trying to make a new home and new life for themselves. It’s always difficult to watch this dynamic, and even more challenging to be a care provider in the middle of it. The adult child in this situation has a choice: they can either rebel against their parents’ holding on, or comply with it…and feel guilty for feeling stifled. Most people choose the latter.

To parents, it can seem as though holding on in this way will keep their child safe. When I watched my brother walk into the hotel, I wanted nothing more than a promise that he would be all right. I wanted a guarantee, even though I know better. There are no guarantees. We can only know that, by holding on too tightly to those we love, we are not loving them as we should. As Martha Beck writes in Steering By Starlight: “The goal of real love is always to set the beloved free.”

We cannot wait for a time when we feel perfectly safe to open our hands.

***

Caroline McGraw is a would-be “childhood paleontologist” who digs for treasure in people. She writes about finding meaning in the most challenging relationships at A Wish Come Clear.

Filed Under: Guest Posts, Special Needs, Special Needs & Charities Tagged With: , ,

Where Are The Parents? {A Lesson On Not Judging Other Moms & Dads}

May 5, 2012 by 5 Comments

{This is a beautifully written post by a mom that was raising a child who was disabled. It had me in tears so I wanted to share it with you all. Reminds us to never judge other parents because we don’t know their situation and what they go through on a daily basis.}

Where Are The Parents? By Sue Stuyvesant, Parent

Hey everyone. For those of you who don’t know me (I’m only an occasional poster) I am mom to Michelle, 9 years old, microcephalic, athetoid/spastic CP, cortical visual impairment, seizure disorder — and CUTE! OK, now for the reason I’m posting.

To make a long story short, earlier this week a question was asked by some nitwit official as to why there weren’t more parents (of special needs kids) involved in the local PTA and other issues that have come up that directly involve our kids. His question, which was passed on to me was, “Where are the parents?” I went home that night, started thinking – and boy was I pi**ed – and banged this “little” essay out the next day on my lunch break. By the way, I took copies of this to the school board meeting that night, gave it to a couple of influential people and it WILL get around………….

Where are the parents?

They are on the phone to doctors and hospitals and fighting with insurance companies, wading through the red tape in order that their child’s medical needs can be properly addressed. They are buried under a mountain of paperwork and medical bills, trying to make sense of a system that seems designed to confuse and intimidate all but the very savvy.

Where are the parents?

They are at home, diapering their 15 year old son, or trying to lift their 100 lb. daughter onto the toilet. They are spending an hour at each meal to feed a child who cannot chew, or laboriously and carefully feeding their child through a g-tube. They are administering medications, changing catheters and switching oxygen tanks.

Where are the parents?

They are sitting, bleary eyed and exhausted, in hospital emergency rooms, waiting for tests results to come back and wondering, “Is this the time when my child doesn’t pull through?” They are sitting patiently in hospital rooms as their child recovers from yet another surgery to lengthen hamstrings or straighten backs or repair a faulty internal organ. They are waiting in long lines in county clinics because no insurance company will touch their child.

Where are the parents?

They are sleeping in shifts because their child won’t sleep more than 2 or 3 hours a night, and must constantly be watched, lest he do himself, or another member of the family, harm. They are sitting at home with their child because family and friends are either too intimidated or too unwilling to help with child care and the state agencies that are designed to help are suffering cut backs of their own.

Where are the parents?

They are trying to spend time with their non-disabled children, as they try to make up for the extra time and effort that is critical to keeping their disabled child alive. They are struggling to keep a marriage together, because adversity does not always bring you closer. They are working 2 and sometime 3 jobs in order to keep up with the extra expenses. And sometimes they are a single parent struggling to do it all by themselves.

Where are the parents?

They are trying to survive in a society that pays lip service to helping those in need, as long as it doesn’t cost them anything. They are trying to patch their broken dreams together so that they might have some sort of normal life for their children and their families.

They are busy, trying to survive.

***

Sue Stuyvesant 10/15/96: Permission to duplicate or distribute this document is granted with the provision that the document remains intact. [Sue passed away in October 2003. Michelle passed away a week before she was to turn 18 in September 2005].

Filed Under: Parenting, Special Needs Tagged With: , ,