Kids With Special Needs

Here's your listing of what your fellow readers have been talking about on this blog over the past month. What do you feel like commenting on today?

• Papoose Boards Make Child Restraint ... Easy? Inhumane?
• Will This Depiction of Down Syndrome Be a Horror Story?
• As the Hunt for Reluctant-Reader-Friendly Summer Books Begins
• Putting Allergic Kids in Charge of Their Safety
• Why Do Kids Who Need Routine Get Shuffled Around the Most?
• Defending 'The Amazing Race's' Margie and Luke
• Is Being Short a Disability?
• 'The Middle' Actor Has Osteogenesis Imperfecta
• Neighbor of a Boy With Autism Asks, How Do We Handle This?
• Autistic Kids, Violent Adults

_{Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images}

Nothing like endless pictures of devastation and nature's wrath on the news and in the paper to remind you that you really should put a disaster preparedness plan together to ensure that your child's special needs can be accommodated in the wake of the unexpected and unforgiving. It's the kind of thing that's easy to put off when you can't imagine where to start, so I've assembled a list of links to resources around the Web that will inform you of all the stuff you need to worry about and help you figure out the who and what and how of getting as ready as possible. There's also a Readers' Respond page on which you can post your effective ideas and cautionary tales. If the emergency at your house right now is finding a way to explain scary news stories to your child, read Talking to Children With Special Needs About Tragedy.

A post by About.com's guide to Children's Books points out that it's Mary Pope Osborne's birthday today, and that reminded me of the many summers I was frantic to find books for my kids' summer reading routines, and how well Osborne's Magic Tree House books filled that slot for a time. They're a great option for struggling readers of a certain age -- chapter books, so you don't have to be shamed by still reading picture books, but simple enough in plot and language to get through with a clue as to what you read. And of course, there are a ton of books in the series, so if you find success with one the library or bookstore has many, many, many more.

The Magic Tree House books are included on my list of book series for kids who can't hack Harry Potter but still want a little magic in their reading. See what else is on the list, and use it as a start for your own summer reading planning. (Another good source of ideas, for parents of reluctantly reading boys, is the site Guys Read. Adventure books by Max Elliot Anderson are also good, straightforward, blessedly easy-to-read boy-book choices.) How do you inspire your reluctant reader? Share your ideas the Readers Respond page, and download the bookmarks pictured here for some extra inspiration.

Here's your weekend listing of all the new content you may have missed from the past week on About Parenting Special Needs.

New Pages and Reader Responses

• Gifts for Special Fathers
• Special-Needs Entertainment News - February through April, 2013
• Readers Respond: Share Your Louisiana Early-Intervention Experiences
• Readers Respond: How Do You Prepare the School for Your Child With a Peanut Allergy?

Blog Posts

• Why Do Kids Who Need Routine Get Shuffled Around the Most?
• All the Big Things You're Going to Accomplish This Summer (Or Not)
• 'Parenthood' Moves, and More Fall Special-Needs TV
• Scratch and Sniff and More Fun Things to Do

Updated Pages

• Site of the Day: May 2013
• Daily News and Weekly News

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:

1. Activity: Scratch and Sniff Painting
2. Kids' Site: Highlights for Kids
3. Shopping: Strider Bikes
4. Inspiration: "Celebs Honor Teen With Terminal Cancer By Performing His Music"
5. 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.

_{Photo by Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images}

Most parents take for granted that their child will go to their neighborhood school, with all the other neighborhood kids, with a predictable trajectory from one elementary school to one middle school to one high school. In the world of special-education, though, such a stable routine is the stuff of fairy tales. Your child may start at one school outside of the neighborhood and switch to another and another, and that's if he or she is in-district in the first place. A parent posting on the Parenting Special Needs Forum recently laments this bopping around and the effect it has on her 10-year-old:

"The county has moved his mild-moderate special day class to a new school almost every year. Third and fourth grade have been in the same school, but we were just informed that he will have to go to a new school for fifth grade. There will not be any SDC at his current school next year. I'm curious if I have any say/rights as far as where he attends school?  Why can't my child stay at the same school each year? It doesn't seem fair to move these kids that don't like change every year. (Plus I have a younger son that is now in elementary school, and I would like them to be able to go to the same school.)"

Making the kids who most need routine have the most disruption -- there were years in my district when no one knew what school kids were going to be at until a week or less before school started -- seems particularly cruel, even though logically I know it's often a matter of space and staffing more than anything else. My family went through a few years of two kids on two different special-education tracks at two different elementary schools outside our neighborhood, and then we lucked into a situation where the neighborhood school happened to have (and hold on to) the track that was best for my son at the same time my daughter was placed in inclusion. The rewards of being at the same school for years, and the same school as your sibling, with enough time for everyone to get to know and appreciate you, are many. Plus, it's easier for mom to volunteer.

Without that luck of the neighborhood draw, or getting your child off the self-contained track into whatever passes for inclusion in your district, I don't know that there's any way for a parent to determine where a child's program will be conducted. If you've had some success at that and have advice to pass on to this parent, reply in the forum and share your experience.

Here's your weekend listing of all the new content you may have missed from the past week on About Parenting Special Needs.

New Pages and Reader Responses

• Gifts for Special Teachers
• Gifts for Special Mothers
• Readers Respond: Share Your Toxic Family Tales
• In the Forum: Program Location Changes

Blog Posts

• Have a Rant in You About Standardized Testing? Share It Here
• Emergency Teacher's Day Gifts (You Forgot, Didn't You?)
• Even Without the R, It's Still the R-Word
• Ice-Cream Bread, Cat Writing, and More Fun Things to Do
• Happy Mother's Day!

Updated Pages

• Site of the Day: May 2013
• Daily News and Weekly News
• 10 Questions to Ask About Standardized Testing for Your Child With Special Needs

Celebrate with the inspirational and humorous gifts for Mother's Day around this site, including printable coupons, book suggestions, and Love Notes for Special Parents.

_{(Image and text by Terri Mauro)}