EVEN IF THEY ARE CLUELESS

Some days it seems as if everyone has an opinion on how our children should be raised and feel the need to tell us everthing we are doing wrong.  This unsolicited advice comes from strangers, professionals, friends and family but most don't have a full understanding of our childrens/families needs.

Recently one child had to have an ultra sound of her bladder and kidneys the technician requested she empty her bladder, this is something that she does not yet have control of.  Instead of the health care professional accepting that this is our daughters reality she goes into a long rant as to how they are able to retrain stroke victims to control their bladders so why haven't we taught our daughter.  Even after explaining that our daughter also doesn't have the cognitive ability to be trained this way the technician could not or would not let this go.

Therapies are another issue of great concern to the people in our life.  We get the "if only you took them to more therapy they could overcome their challenges" and we also get the opposite "your child (children) need time to be kids, they would make far more progress if you just stopped all the therapy".  The reality is I would love it if they didn't require therapy but they do and we are having it provided for them hoping for positive results.

As parents we also get blamed for their various challenges and I know we aren't the only ones who get this, many parents get blamed for causing their child's conditions.  It's because you didn't do ____ correctly or if only you did ____ differently.

When it's been a particularly long day...week... month... it can be difficult too hear the words of a well intended person without replying in a nasty way.  Sometimes I need to pause and consider where their advice is coming from and are they trying to be helpful or are they just being nasty?  Is there anything I can learn from the information they are sharing?  I also need to remind myself, especially on the stressful days, that they have a right to their opinion EVEN IF THEY ARE CLUELESS.  I also need to remind myself too speak to others how I would like to be treated because others also have exhausting and stressful days.  We need to give each other a break and keep our unsolicited opinions and advice to ourselves.  Telling people that everything they do is wrong or their fault doesn't benefit anyone.  Offering to help or simply acknowleding the effort a parent puts in would be so much more beneficial.  I would like to start by acknowledging all of you hard working parents "thank you for everything you do for your child (children)".

Working together....back to routines

We have been busy getting back into the routines that come with school and all the added after school activities as we say goodbye to summer.  September is a good time to review the progress over the last year and make new goals for everyone.  With our children that have additional special needs we take an extra look at their therapies and schooling ensuring we don't get stuck in a rut and are still moving forward.

Every September and then again in January we request a progress assessment from our therapists.  The speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists and behavioral consultant have all been busy with our children determining their current levels.  Having these assessments, aids us in setting goals for the next months.  We are determining if the therapies and therapists are effective, what we should focus on and/or if we would get more benefit elsewhere.

We also take a serious look at their educational needs.  September is a great time for setting academic and/or life skill goals for the year, choosing curriculum's and methods to suit everyone's abilities.  As a homeschooling family of multiple children with special needs we have the benefit of educational assistants that support our children.  We have been busy training our educational assistants so they can support our children in meeting this years goals.

After all the assessments are complete and our educational assistants have had sometime to get to know the children and their needs we plan a team meeting/IEP (individual education plan) meeting.  For this team meeting we invite all the therapist and teaching staff, we want everyone on the same page working with the children so they can have the most productive year possible.  Working our way through the family discussing everyone's needs, brainstorming ideas and making an action plan for school, therapies and any extra curricular activities that may benefit each child (on top of the extra curricular activities that meet their interests).