Create a Joy Journal

Maybe you keep a record of medical details and contacts with professionals, and maybe you keep a personal journal to help you deal with the stresses and heartaches of parenting a child with special needs. Those are good things to do, but try adding one more record-keeping exercise to your routine: a special journal just for jotting down all the things that go right for your child, the everyday triumphs, the funny things that happen, the nice things someone says, the battles won, the milestones met in their own sweet time. It's easy to lose track of that good stuff when the bad is coming at you, so it's worth taking a moment to write it down when it happens. You'll not only have the ultimate inspirational resource for those times when everything seems gloom and doom, but you'll provide your child and family with a positive history of your lives together.