Tis’ the season, once again, to face my daughter’s annual IEP. It is one of those meetings you silently dread, while all the time knowing you have to show up and be your best and bring your best game. I rarely have done that. My normal IEP day follows a sleepless night trying to think through…
Caregivers For Special Kids
There is always so much talk about how Mom’s need to care for themselves so that they are able to care for their children. When you Google “Secrets of a Happy Mom” you come up with everything ranging from new moms to moms of teenagers, and all the ways one can find happiness in those…
Where to raise a special child?
I didn’t know when we chose out community, or our house, that we would become a Special Needs family and rely heavily on the resources around us. Thank goodness we made the house choice we did, because the services and resources have been beyond value for our situation. The school system has been fabulous for…
What A Simple Spring Break Trip Did For This Mom
My family recently traveled for Spring Break – for a lot of reasons other than just “because everyone else does it.” I felt we needed a drastic change of scenery. We have been on a hamster wheel for way too many months – full of therapy after therapy, doctors’ visits, hockey practices, hockey games, homework,…
Teaching Kids to Appreciate What They Have
I spent a very special day in Chicago yesterday with my daughters. We were celebrating my ten year old daughters making it through a whole year after her intensive surgery to lengthen her tendons and to replace her hips. It has been a long, very hard, very painful year for her, and I thought…
Sisters and Disability
I think it is a common theme in disability parenting that we worry about our kids who are challenged, but also have our own set of worries for our other children. Those strong little souls that travel alongside their siblings, offering support, love, and strength of their own. It is my constant fear that I…
The super hero flexibility of the special needs parent
I would not say I am a particularly flexible person, in the physical sense. Can’t quite remember my last back bend or splits – but it was definitely sometime in my early childhood. Yet, people are always commenting on my flexibility, my patience, and my ability to see the sunny side of the street. I…
The Waiting Room : Now
Ten years ago I was a much different Mom sitting in this waiting room. Now, seasoned beyond my wildest dreams, I have sat in more waiting rooms than I care to count. The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago is a massive place. Floors of people who have suffered injuries, or strokes, or surgeries stay here and…
Feeling Empowered
Every year around this time I start to catalog the year up until now, and to see its high and low points. I get mentally ready to tackle my resolution list, and to evaluate how I think I have done on all those goals and dreams I started with last December 31st. My wise brother…
Reasons To Be Thankful
Photo Courtesy of Unsplash Photographer Julia Revitt Every year at our Thanksgiving Dinner with my family, after lots of football and laughing and eating, and just being happy to be together, we circle the table with things we are thankful for that year. I am assuming this is the same for most families, and it…