Welcome to 5 Minutes for Special Needs Books, a place for readers to talk about special needs titles!
This week’s book is More Than a Mom: Living a Full and Balanced Life When Your Child has Special Needs. Designed to answer any of the many questions moms may have about how to better live their lives while caring for one or more children with unique challenges, it was written by authors Amy Baskin and Heather Fawcett after considering feedback from 500 mothers across the United States and Canada.
The book’s topics are divided into 8 parts including sections such as “Taking Care of Yourself”, “Daily Life—Reality Check”, and “Transformations—From Struggle to Strength.” There are quizzes, task charts, bulleted points, lists, suggestions, and an “Experience Talks” section, which includes direct quotes from some of the many women who participated in the project. There is a sample of a flexibility proposal memo, a checklist for special needs childcare, sample caregiver interview questions, and a sample life skills plan.
Authors Baskin, mother of a child with autism, and Fawcett, mother of a child with Asperger syndrome, felt there was a need for a book like More Than a Mom: Living a Full and Balanced Life When Your Child has Special Needs. So they put together a questionnaire for other mothers, and approached many of the appropriate organizations, including The National Down Syndrome Society, United Cerebral Palsy, and Autism Society Ontario, to enlist their aid in getting the word out to their members.
By contacting varied special needs organizations, the authors were able to produce a book that is useful to parents of children with diverse needs. The writing is not diagnosis-specific; instead, it recognizes the similarities in the experiences many mothers share. The result is a book that feels as if it were written for moms, by moms, backed by plenty of facts and research.
I’m no stranger to the quest for a balanced life. I’m mom to three young sons; my middle boy, Avery, has Down syndrome. And even though I felt as if this book were written for me, sitting down to read More Than a Mom: Living a Full and Balanced Life When Your Child has Special Needs was a daunting task. It’s a hefty book, at 450-plus pages, and the information covers a lot of ground—cleaning, laundry, taxes, health insurance, estate planning, journaling, sleep, diet, motivation, advocacy, depression, anger, anxiety. Reading the book felt to me a bit like eating spinach—I know I should, I know it will be good for me, but still, it also feels like work.
Until I realized this–More Than a Mom: Living a Full and Balanced Life When Your Child has Special Needs is a lot like a dictionary, or an encyclopedia. Not many people sit down and read the dictionary cover to cover. Instead, they keep it on the shelf, and refer back to it as needed.
More Than a Mom: Living a Full and Balanced Life When Your Child has Special Needs is like that. You might not need to read every section; not all the advice will pertain to you. But it’s good to know it’s there, just in case. It’s like having a really smart friend on speed dial, someone you can turn to whenever you need.
If you’ve read this book, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it! And if you’d like to read it, I have one copy of this book to share; leave your name in the comments and I’ll choose a winner at random.
Happy reading!
Jennifer Graf Groneberg lives at the end of a two-track dirt lane at the foot of the Crazy Mountains with her husband and their three children. She’s the author of the book, Road Map to Holland: How I Found My Way Through My Son’s First Two Years with Down Syndrome (NAL/Penguin, 2008), a memoir that offers practical advice and emotional support to parents of children with special needs. You can read more about Jennifer and her family at www.jennifergrafgroneberg.com.