I first suspected I had ADHD as a teenager, but finding the right professional to take me seriously was much harder than I expected. Previous attempts only ended in frustration and tears.
Enjoying the holidays with a food allergy sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? After all, eating together is an integral component of the holiday season. I looked forward to making our traditional holiday foods until I was diagnosed with a dairy allergy in 2012. What was to enjoy about the holidays when the foods associated with it were off limits to me?
It was a short, ten-minute drive from the hotel to the residential facility. I maintained composure while I navigated the busy public roads, and then residential streets. I had a whole range of emotions racing through my body, mind and spirit as we pulled into the campus. This was not just a pleasure drive or a routine errand, this was a significant milestone in the life of my son and our family.
While Halloween is a fun time of year for many children, it can be a really difficult time for some, including many children with additional/special needs. For them it can be a confusing, anxiety-inducing, or even utterly terrifying time. But it doesn’t have to be like that. If we stop for a moment to think about the things they might find hard and how to put things in place to help them, children with special needs can safely join in the fun, too. So what are some of the things about Halloween that children with additional needs can find hard?
“While we’ve had many years of travel speaking together on marriage, discipleship, and other topics, we are seldom alone and ‘just us’”Joe & Cindi Ferrini write on the struggle of never truly being along as special needs parents, and the importance of making time “just for us.”
The child was about 12 years old and weighed about that many pounds or a few more. As a young high school aged student, I didn’t know how to relate, respond, or inquire about my friends’ sibling that I was seeing—not meeting—for the first time. I’d known my friend for at least three years, and not once did my friend mention this sibling. It was my first introduction to someone having a family member with special needs.
As I sat down to share life with fellow special needs parents in this blog, it occurred to me that the best I might offer was a shared prayer for the upcoming holiday season. Perhaps you, too, are thinking out of the box about how to make the most of new and unexpected holiday dynamics. Together let’s pray, Lord, make our homes an instrument of Your peace.
Anger, guilt, anxiety, loneliness, stress and exhaustion. Pick a feeling and a special needs caregiver has experienced it, and not occasionally or seasonally, but often daily. We could all use a helping hand from a friend or a stranger or a church parishioner, someone who gives us a tiny boost of hope when we need it the most, but special needs caregivers are in an exceptional category. Here are seven tangible ways you might consider lifting their exceptional burden just a bit.
A question I get asked loads of times is this; “How can I explain special needs to children?” One suggestion I give to people trying to explain this to children is to gather them all together. Ask them what is different about each of them, compared to the rest of the group. It can also be helpful to think about popular children’s characters and discuss the differences between them. The characters in the A.A. Milne Winnie the Pooh stories offer a great example for younger children.
