Top Ten Most Popular Parenting Special Needs Articles of 2008

There's nothing wrong with saying those three little words every day to your child, over and over again. But many children with special needs are unable to respond to that loving message the way we'd like; they may be puzzled by emotions, uncomfortable with hugs, unable to process anything but the most concrete language. Then, too, siblings of special-needs kids may value your time and attention more than your words if they're feeling under-appreciated. Sometimes you can get your message through in a more sincere and meaningful way if you show rather than tell, or find fun and disarming ways to sneak your feelings in. This colorful mini-poster offers 22 ways to start.

The "504" in "504 plan" refers to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, which specifies that no one with a disability can be excluded from participating in federally funded programs or activities, including elementary, secondary or postsecondary schooling. Learn more from about 504 plans from this first page of the 504 FAQ, then continue on through the questions and answers that follow.

A periodic homework assignment for schoolchildren is to put covers on textbooks. Many schools make it easy by allowing stretchy BookSox, but others insist on these old-fashioned brown paper bag numbers. While most kids will learn to do this on their own, children with special needs may always depend on Mom or Dad to handle this particular assignment. Can't quite remember how? Here's your cheat sheet.

A good Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) can make a big difference in how a student with special needs acts and reacts in a school setting. However, getting the appropriate school personnel to do the necessary behavior analysis and put a plan together can be a frustratingly lengthy process. You may want to try proposing a behavior plan of your own -- particularly if you have a good relationship with your child study team, and your child's teachers are as frustrated by the delays as you are.

Need more help than you got from the how-to at #3? This popular step-by-step offers an illustrated tutorial in cutting, folding, fitting, slipping on, and finishing a paper-bag book cover.

Behavior charts -- on which doing chores, behaving, and handling self-care tasks are rewarded with points -- can be effective ways of getting children to do what parents want. But often parents of children with special needs find that their kids don't respond to point charts; the concept is too abstract or the gratification too delayed. Adjusting and simplifying the chart idea to your child's particular needs and abilities can help. Here's how to do it.

Every Saturday on the About.com Parenting Special Needs blog, I offer five fun sites to visit -- site describing a family activity, a site for kids, a shopping site, a site with inspiration or humor, and a site that's just for amusement. Those sites get saved on this Fun Things to Do Today index, a good spot to stop whenever you're looking for a family friendly good time.

Shampoos with tea tree oil aren't the best-smelling things you're ever going to put on your child's head -- but as much as you don't like it, lice dislike it even more, and will find a treated head altogether less hospitable. That makes it a good natural solution, particularly in conjunction with another technique such as smothering the bugs. You'll also want to have everybody else in the family shampoo with it to stay lice-free.

That's a dangerous question to answer these days. To say "yes" or "maybe" is to be accused of inviting a public health disaster as millions of parents refuse to vaccinate their children against dread diseases. But to say "no" is to deny the experience of parents who need no more proof than the fact that their children were fine before a shot and not fine after. The issue has become a flashpoint of contention, pitting science against faith, doctors against parents, and parents against one another.

A Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) takes the observations made in a Functional Behavioral Assessment and turns them into a concrete plan of action for managing a student's behavior. Learn more about BIPs from this definition page.