Stop by here every Saturday for a family activity, a site for the kids, a shopping site, a site offering humor or inspiration about parenting children with special needs, and a site that's just silly or fun, all designed to get you through your weekend with kids amused and spirits intact. Today's list:
- Activity: Scratch and Sniff Painting
- Kids' Site: Highlights for Kids
- Shopping: Strider Bikes
- Inspiration: "Celebs Honor Teen With Terminal Cancer By Performing His Music"
- Just for Fun: Top Baby Names
If you're looking forward to sitting down on Tuesday nights at 10 in the fall for new episodes of Parenthood, surprise! You'll be watching Chicago Fire instead. Don't worry, Parenthood has indeed been renewed, and for a full season instead of the shortened batch of episodes of past seasons. But the Bravermans are moving to Thursday nights at 10 on NBC's new fall schedule announced this week. That pairs Parenthood (a 2012 Readers' Choice Award finalist for Favorite Special-Needs TV Show and a favorite for its inclusion of a child with Asperger syndrome among all the brothers and sisters and cousins) with The Michael J. Fox Show, another program with potential special-needs appeal, since both the star and the character he plays have Parkinson's disease.
As a recent Disability Scoop post points out, there are a couple of other new special-needs-related shows on NBC's 2013-2014 schedule, including Ironside, with Blair Underwood as a wheelchair-using detective (debuting in the fall), and The Family Guide, with J.K. Simmons as a blind dad ("coming soon," says NBC). Have you noticed any other new shows with disability-related plotlines? Looking forward to seeing actors like Atticus Shaffer (The Middle) and Lauren Potter (Glee) on your screen again? Mourning the loss of Gary from Alphas and all the special-needs metaphors on Fringe? Share your TV thoughts in the comments.
Realistically? Once you get down to it, probably just making it through the summer, one day at a time, is as big an achievement as you're going to accomplish. But while summer vacation is still a short ways away, and there's time to imagine the amazing things you'll get done, why not take a glance at my list of Five Summer Projects for Families of Children With Special Needs. From potty training to reading routines to organizing all those IEPs piled up in a corner of your bedroom, I've set you some lofty goals and provided practical advice on how to make them happen. Pick one out and read how you'd do it, and at least you can say you got as far as planning before life intervened.
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