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What Pride Looks Like: On Report Cards, Respect and #specialneeds
Think they don’t care much about what is written on report cards? Think that little people are oblivious to how the teacher sees them and feels about them? Words matter, and never more so than when someone is assessing a child with special needs after a year of school. This is our first experience with a really accepting and lovely teacher who clearly understood and liked my youngest daughter. I am driving both my kids to Build-A-Bear to celebrate their last day of school when the little one cracks open her report card and starts reading it word for word. This, in itself, is a major accomplishment. She is not…
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Ten Ways to Help a Child with FASD
For the first five years of my daughter Ainsley’s life we spent countless resources trying to figure out ways to help manage her disability. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder is incredibly tricky to diagnose, and then to manage on an average day. FASD is fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, an invisible brain injury brought on my prenatal alcohol exposure. In Ontario we are likely 15 years behind the autism movement and advocacy effort. I have been told this by many experts in the education and health care fields. So, in the province where I live we have very limited resources right now. It’s likely my child will likely never receive the exact…
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The Protective Factor of Diagnosis and Three Ways to Help a Person with FASD Now
When it comes to children and any form of disability early diagnosis and intervention is often key to success. Why is that? Because having a way to frame a child’s behaviour can make all the difference in the world to how you approach that child as a parent, as a therapist, a doctor, or a school. If you try to teach a fish to walk you end up frustrated, but worse than that you end up making the fish feel stupid. Proper diagnosis of FASD is critical to success. So why do we have such difficulty diagnosing and treating children and youth with FASD? And what is it? FASD, or fetal…
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Can you drink alcohol when pregnant? – #PreventFASD
Can you drink alcohol when pregnant? It’s a weighty, controversial question. So many popular myths still endorse drinking alcohol as culturally acceptable when pregnant. Many people still believe alcohol is okay to consume in moderate amounts when you are pregnant. This is an interactive post designed to get you thinking about drinking when pregnant and risks associated with that. Interactive and hands on learning works best for my child with FASD – fetal alcohol spectrum disorder – and the same is true of many of our children and young adults diagnosed with FASD. So let’s give this a try. This is the first in a series of posts on FASD…
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Five Easy and Free Sensory Play Activities for Kids
With an increasing number of kids who have sensory processing disorder or sensory issues related to brain injury, concussion or autism, there’s a lot of new knowledge about sensory play and sensory activities. We started reading up on sensory play and sensory processing disorder years ago when Ainsley was first diagnosed. Depending on whether your child is sensory seeking or sensory avoiding any one, or all of these may appeal to them. FIVE EASY SENSORY PLAY ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS Fill a sink with warm water and soap suds. Have them wash things. Toys, dolls, dishes. My youngest daughter, shown here, could do this for almost…
