Category Archives: Social Skills

Out of the Blue

Are you ever taken by surprise by something your kids say…out of the blue? Today at lunch my daughter started a conversation that surprised me on many levels. She was tuned in, took multiple appropriate turns, answered questions and absorbed complex answers. I will savor this one for a long time: The Child: “Mom, I…

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Staying Sane While Raising a Bipolar Child

She stomps out of the room, each firmly-planted step shaking the floor. Tear-stained, she plunges her face into the pillows on her bed, where she screams and cries. As she starts to calm down, I feel the adrenaline retreating into the places from which it flooded my body. Breathing, relaxing myself, I tend to her…

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Complacent?

I scrambled up the hill to my daughter’s “old school” to pick up my son from his “new class.” My daughter attended this school from Early Intervention through Kindergarten before being moved to our neighborhood school for first grade. I know most of the Early Intervention staff pretty well, and I know the IEP process…

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Neighborhood Friends

One of the things I love about our neighborhood is all the kids on the street. It’s reminiscent of when I was a kid and would run the neighborhood from morning till dusk, riding my bike or roller skating or playing a neighborhood game of hide and seek. True things are a little different now….

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How to Handle a Fluke…

I arrived a few minutes before the bell that ends the school day. I realized that one of my friends was trying to get my attention and directing my gaze down the outdoor corridor outside my daughter’s classroom. I saw my daughter walking toward me with another friend of mine – fortunately one that has…

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Circle of Friends

As a parent of a special needs child, we often befriend other parents who are walking a similar life path. Friendship among parents can bring great benefits. But pitfalls lurk below the radar. Today I share what we have learned about our circle of friends.

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When she won’t hug Grandma

We flew 8 hours with 4 kids and umpteen bags across the country to visit Grandma. Within 2 minutes they’d already hurt her feelings. It’s always been stressful to balance the expectations of extended family and the needs of my two older girls, adopted as toddlers from foster care. Both their difficult history and their…

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Three Little Words

I know it’s not perfect, the medication J is on. But it’s doing something. It’s helping to quiet the activity in his brain…sometimes. It’s helping him to find more words, helping the words to find their place within a sentence, to communicate. I talk about watching our children’s achievements, however small, but sometimes these achievements…

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Is that too much to ask?

This week my husband’s grandmother passed away. She was 93 year old, never took more than a multi-vitamin in her life. She did however, several years back, begin her journey with Alzheimer’s Disease. It was a long journey, spending 10 years in a nursing home. She had 5 children, 12 grandchildren…and so many great grand…

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If We Build It…

Tying in with last week’s playground challenge, I thought I’d take a moment to tell you about a project I’ve been involved with since last September. This is a “to be continued…” post since the project is not complete yet, but I wanted to get started on the story. A friend of ours is an…

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