The year is drawing to a close scary fast, but though I'm not organized about all the things I have to do this holiday season, I am organized about one thing: I've already posted my Love Notes Calendar pages for 2010. That means you can feel organized right now by printing yourself out a set and feeling all ready for the new year. (Although, if you're like me, if you print them out now, you'll just lose them by January 1, so you might just want to print them out as needed.) The set also makes a nice gift for a friend whose helped you with special-needs advice and advocacy. With inspirational text for every month of the year, these calendar pages make sure you get off to a good start.

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Read: "Many parents view professional ideas with suspicion because they have lived through initiatives that they perceived failed their child or that the professional starts something and then departs for new pastures. Families don't leave; they pick up the pieces when professionals make mistakes. Therefore it is not surprising that parents are skeptical about professional help." -- Linda Woodcock and Andrea Page, from Managing Family Meltdown: The Low Arousal Approach and Autism.

Reflect: How do I feel about the professionals who have worked with my child? Have I felt bossed or abandoned by them? Am I open to the help they bring, or skeptical of it?

Respond in the comments with your own thoughts on this quote and how it applies to your life with your child.

Every weekday, take a moment to read, reflect, and respond to a passage from a book, blog, or article. ... More Reflections

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What It Is: "Your destination for gluten-free product information, new product news and recipes from General Mills. Our goal is to help you live your life without gluten... freely."

Who's In Charge: Food manufacturer General Mills started the site to promote its "more than 200 great-tasting gluten-free products," and the ones it hopes to continue developing.

Why It's Worth Checking Out: You can find lists of gluten-free General Mills products, as well as recipes that make use of them, and subscribe to a newsletter to keep up on new selections.

Where to Start: Product List

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The first time I ever saw Zhu Zhu Pets was this weekend, when a commercial on one of my kids' shows zipped by and I thought, "What, these are pets for parents who won't let their kids have pets? How pathetic." Then I heard they were the hottest gift this Christmas. Then I heard they were toxic.

That's particularly bad news if your child with special needs has or wants the hamster known as "Mr. Squiggles." The potential harmfulness of the toy's antimony and tin content would presumably be highest for kids who like to lick their toys, or suck on their toys, or rip whiskers off their toys and eat them, or rub their hands all over their toys and put their fingers in their mouths, and ... we don't know any kiddos like that, do we? Hmm. There's also the issue of kids with limited communication skills being even less able to understand why a beloved toy must be taken away than the average child. If you are in the position of denying the love of Mr. Squiggles to your child this holiday season, you have my sympathy.

But there's an upside to this sort of public uproar over a super-hot toy item: it allows those of us whose children's interests are in a whole different dimension from anything that would be popular with their peers to have a sweet, rare moment of smugness. So maybe my boy wants to find a box full of shopping bags or a set of uncut keys or a bundle of car advertising circulars under the tree; that may be odd, but at least I'm not standing in line for ten hours to buy some pathetic imitation rodent that's toxic, ya know! Ha!

For those of you who are taking this little moment of superiority with me, let us give thanks that consumer advocacy agencies only do testing on the top toys, and not on the sort of obscure items our kids fixate on whose risks, if they exist, are never going to be pointed out to us by busybody do-gooding watchdogs. Oddness has its virtues.

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