eSpecially Ben

I recently read the above title on another blog and thought, finally, someone is going to talk about the negative thoughts, the difficult feelings and the harsh realities that accompany the world of special needs. It turned out to be about someone ranting about their guilty pleasures. So here is my attempt to tackle the topic. Ben’s behavior therapist is researching the process in which parents go through after learning they have a child with special needs for her doctoral dissertation. This may be ground breaking territory. I am unaware of a model that discusses how parents and families move through the emotions of this experience. If you think of the grief process with individuals moving through denial, anger and acceptance, this would be a similar model. What would be the steps for parents of a child with special needs? Denial, anger, withdrawal, acceptance and action/advocacy may be a part of it. Like many models, people could cycle through these levels more than once depending

When Ben turned three years old, his services were turned over to the school system. This transition meant a new school placement for Ben. We have been incredibly lucky to have had caring case managers, teachers and therapists to work with Ben since he was a baby. I trusted their ideas and suggestions. At the big transition meeting to determine a new school for Ben, this group told me that there was one school Ben just had to attend. From what they had heard, it had the best teachers, therapists and reputation. I visited this school. I left knowing that something was not right. I could not put a name to it, I could not tell someone why, when asked. I questioned this doubt, pushed it aside because everyone else knew better than me. They'd been doing this longer. At first, we sent Ben there five days a week, and slowly, moved to two days a week for a couple of hours, then yanked him out quite abruptly. Three years later, I have perspective on this experience. At the time, it co

It's been a long day with little sleep - can't blame the kids or the husband (he yelled at 1am for me to come to bed). I'm not good at comebacks but later I did think, I should have said, "Did Mrs. Einstein yell, 'Hey Al, come to bed, it's getting late and that stuff you're working on can wait.'" I was up until 3am working on this blogsite. It has been in the works in my head for a long time. And for whatever reason, I had the courage to do it. Perhaps it was last night's book club discussion about "Loving Frank." Perhaps I was just ready. So thank you to anyone out there who has read some of my postings. It is encouraging to hear your comments, ideas and thoughts. This is all new and I will use the words of my good friend Tracy, "Trust the process."