Autism Speaks is hosting its Austin “Walk Now for Autism” event this Saturday, November 15, at the Dell Diamond in Round Rock, Texas. Registration starts at 8:30 a.m. In addition to the walk, there is an autism community resource fair, live music and fun activities for kids. For more information, check out the Special Needs Neighborhood.com events page.
More and more social networking sites are launched monthly. Our sociological tendency to gather in groups has turned virtual. The Internet has led people to online support groups where online communities are formed and kindred spirits connect. Users search out concrete feedback for life’s issues. Technology has transformed our experiences from sideline observers to proactive participants.
How do you get connected online?
What sites are your favorites?
How do you think technology has transformed the experience of parenting a child with special needs?
The Austin-area nonprofit, El Buen Samaritano is having a one-day registration THIS Saturday, November 8, 2008, beginning at 9:00 a.m. to sign up low-income children to receive free Christmas toys during their holiday party on December 19th. At the time of registration, parents will be required to show proof of income, bring a photo I.D., proof of address and a valid birth certificate for each child they are registering.
The first 500 children signed up on Saturday morning from 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m will be eligible to receive the free toys. El Buen Samaritano is located at 7000 Woodhue Drive, Austin, Texas, 78745. To find out more, you can call El Buen Samaritano, at 439-0700. Hablan español si necesitan.
Another Central Texas nonprofit offering assistance through providing low-income children with free toys at Christmas is the Christmas Bureau. Applications are being accepted at 10 Austin-area locations, including the East Austin Neighborhood Center, Rosewood Zaragosa Neighborhood Center, Blackland Neighborhood Center, St. John’s Neighborhood Center and the South Austin Neighborhood Center plus 5 other area locations. Click to download the file with a listing of locations and times to apply with the Christmas Bureau. Christmas Bureau schedule Applicants must show proof of income to register.
Volunteer opportunities:
If you would like to volunteer to help with any of the El Buen Samaritano programs, visit their website at www.elbuen.org. El Buen requests that you register by November 14th for holiday volunteer opportunities.
El Buen Samaritano Episcopal Mission is a nonprofit organization
committed to transforming lives by engaging the strengths of working-poor
Hispanic families to promote their successful participation in our society.
To sign up to help “sponsor” a family and provide food/and or toys to a needy family through the Christmas Bureau, call the Christmas Bureau 453-3950 AFTER December 1st (when they are set up to take volunteers). The Christmas Bureau of Austin and Travis County serves as an umbrella organization encompassing all community groups and citizens who work together in giving to the needy during the Christmas season. The Bureau matches needy families with agencies/sponsors who provide a suitable meal and/or toys and gifts to the applicants. To learn more, visit their website at www.cbofaustin.org
Do you have a holiday program that you have volunteered for? or a holiday program that you have benefited from that you would like to tell us about?
This time last year, my son was just starting to use verbal language. However, when I asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween last year, he answered right away, “A Pumpkin…Big Pumpkin.”
Flummoxed as to where to buy a pumpkin costume for a school-age child, our son’s babysitter tried her hand at making one. She painted a black sweatshirt with a pumpkin face. My son turned this option down by repeating over and over again, “BIG pumpkin.” Then, I tried stuffing it with newspaper. Same answer back, “BIG pumpkin.”
Out of desperation the day before Halloween, I went to Austin’s famed, Lucy in Disguise costume shop while my son was in speech therapy. I ran in, “I need a large pumpkin for a large boy,” and thank goodness one of the overworked employees led me through passages of costumes before finding the pumpkin section (you have got to see this store if you live or visit Austin) and grabbing the largest stuffed pumpkin outfit they had and a a pair of green leggings he rushed to check me out. I made it back just in time. “Is this what you want?” I panted running into the waiting room to claim him “YEA!!” he said, “A BIG Pumpkin.”
Problem solved, I thought. I am SO SMART!
On Halloween evening, we met up with some neighbors and went trick-or-treating. So far, so good…our first Halloween where my son was “a part of the gang.” Until the end of the night, when the group dispersed and headed home…he wailed, “NO!!” and laid down on one of my neighbor’s front yard crying for “The party! The party!…with friends and bobbing for apples and pumpkins.”
And then, it dawned on me…he thought we were living inside “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” by Charles Schultz. That’s why he wanted to dress as The BIG pumpkin, he meant The Great Pumpkin. Uh-oh.
Every night leading up to Halloween, he had requested that we read the Charlie Brown classic, It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. No harm there, it’s a great story. However, my son thought that at the end of the trick-or-treating, we would do what the characters in the book did, have a party, with “bobbing for apples,” and “playing with friends”.
My son takes stories literally. This can be a good thing when you write a social story to explain something, or a bad thing, when you cannot live out the “script” of a fiction book, because, well, it’s fiction.
He sobbed himself to sleep that night. There was no explaining to him with words why there was not a party awaiting him when we got home from making the rounds with his friends. To him, the book had made a promise of what Halloween included, and it included a party at the end.
Lesson learned. This year, following the tips from Tuesday, my son and I are writing our own story about Halloween. This story includes trick-or-treating, but no party and no World War I flying aces on levitating dog houses.
Wish us luck!
I’d like to hear from you…do you have any Halloween stories to share?
The good, the bad and the spooky are all encouraged.
When I took my son to physical therapy on Tuesday, all of the therapists including my son’s, were dressed up in Halloween costumes. He was very confused. Luckily not scared, just couldn’t tell who was who because some people were wearing wigs that were not the same color as their hair. Apparently, hair color is key for my son in identifying who is who.
This leads me to offer two more tips:
Tomorrow’s Halloween Finale…ghosts of Halloween past.
Ready, set, GO! Are you ready?? The holidays are here!
With Halloween just a few days away, it’s time to prepare yourself and your family for the upcoming holiday season. Halloween can be a challenging time for children with special needs. There are lots of things to contend with…sugar, spooky costumes, crazy schedules, parties…so planning is key to keeping things from getting too scary.
Here are some tips for making Halloween “a treat”:
These are some of our ideas…
Do YOU have any ideas or tips to share?
Actress, Singer, and Author Holly Robinson Peete gave the Keynote Address at the USAAA 2008 Autism & Asperger International Conference held in Austin last month. The conference focused on biomedical, behavioral and developmental presentations related to the treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Ms. Peete’s keynote address focused on her own personal journey with autism through retelling her family story about the birth of her children, the difficulties her one son had after his immunizations (”my story, my science” she said in reference to conflicting information about the role of vaccinations in causing autism) and the challenges that her family and marriage faced as they worked through understanding and accepting that her eldest son has autism.
“There’s no ‘Welcome to Autism’ Handbook,” Ms. Peete told the crowd as she recounted the early days when her son was first diagnosed with autism. She said that at the time of the diagnosis the diagnosing doctor mainly focused on what her son would not be able to do instead of talking about treatments or programs that could improve his symptoms. Ms. Peete described the doctor’s attitude toward her son was one of disability, not possibility. She recounted that the doctor kept listing things that “he will never” be able to do, like “he will never live on his own, he will never tell you he loves you without prompting.” Through therapies, dietary and biomedical interventions, Ms. Peete’s son is proving the original doctor wrong with the progress that he has made in the intervening years since his initial diagnosis.
She talked about the early “dark days,” before she and her husband, Rodney Peete, a former NFL quarterback, had found medical treatments that helped their son and before they had been given a message of hope from medical practitioners who employ dietary and biomedical approaches for people with autism spectrum disorder.
Ms. Peete also gave a very candid portrait of the impact autism had on her marriage, family and friendships. She talked about the fact that 80 percent of marriages with a child with autism end in divorce, “that 80 percent number is no joke…I have had friends who are no longer married because of autism.” She talked about her family’s “kitchen table meetings” where they discussed going “public” with their family’s story in People Magazine and why they decided that being nationally visible was important for the cause of autism.
In her hour-long address, Ms. Peete talked about autism, but what I heard and what I talked to other parents after the speech, was Ms. Peete’s overriding message of hope for parents with children with autism. Hope that our children can accomplish goals, hope that we can find treatments that help them, and hope that our families will not only survive the ordeal, but can thrive.
After her speech, Ms. Peete spent at least an hour signing autographs, talking to parents and caregivers and posing for photos. She was very generous with her time, her story and her message of hope.
The 9th annual Down Syndrome Association of Central Texas “Buddy Walk” will be held this Sunday, October 19th, at Reunion Park in Georgetown, Texas. Click here to get more details. The event is FREE and everyone is invited to attend and enjoy the entertainment, that includes local kid-pleaser, Joe McDermott, along with games and the 1K walk. The goal of the walk is to celebrate people with Down Syndrome and to educate the public about the condition.
I am grateful that the Down Syndrome Association of Central Texas is active and visible in communicating the rights of people with disabilities. All of our kids benefit when organizations, regardless of disability type, step up and are visible on issues like inclusion, acceptance and opportunity for people with differences.
One of the reasons that Kim and I chose the name Special Needs Neighborhood.com as the website’s name is because we wanted other parents and caregivers like us, who have children with special needs or care for people with unique needs, to have a place that felt like “home” to them. So often parents like us feel excluded from the larger population or trends in mainstream parenting. Ours is a different journey. Our goal with Special Needs Neighborhood.com was to create a virtual neighborhood, one where we all could come together and help each other out.
In the spirit of this goal, we created a section called, “Ask the Community,” where we invite “neighbors” to pose questions and provided the format where anyone that visits the site can suggest an answer. If you have not been to this section of the website before, I encourage you to take a minute and click on the photo icon at the top of the website, or find “Ask the Community” on the left hand navigation bar. Each of our Special Needs Neighborhood.com cities have the ability to pose questions.
On the Austin “Ask the Community” page, many of the questions posed have been answered, but there are still a few questions that await some input from you. On the site today, you will read questions from a 12-year-old girl with developmental delays waiting for a friend, a 17-year-old with mild mental retardation looking for guidance on living independently, and a mother, whose children are exhibiting problem behaviors that is looking for advice. All of these people have posed a question and are waiting for you to provide some ideas. I invite you today to visit Austin’s “Ask the Community”page and read through the first few questions and see if you have a resource or an idea that you might be able to share with these families looking for answers.
Knowing that you can help a neighbor out gives me a good feeling and I’m sure it does you as well. Our community is made stronger by all of us sharing our knowledge and helping our neighbors out. Thank you for being a part of our neighborhood.
Austin will host the 44th annual Learning Disabilities Association of Texas conference today and tomorrow at the Sheraton Austin Hotel in downtown Austin. Parents are welcome to attend, as well as people with learning disabilities, regular and special educators, counselors, psychologists, speech/language pathologists, physicians, social workers, and other professionals who work with persons with learning disabilities.
Kim and I will be there to spread the word about Special Needs Neighborhood.com. We’ll have a booth in the exhibit hall…come by and say hi.
For more information on when and where and conference sessions, visit the Special Needs Neighborhood Austin Events page to find out more details.
Hope to see you there!
