My Helper and Current Happenings

My daughter, who just turned three, is in "potty training" mode right now. About all she wants to do to "train" however, is put on a pair of underwear and then sit on her potty chair in front of her "Once Upon A Potty" DVD. Yesterday she wanted to watch it and she asked me to help her find the DVD. I looked in two places it could possibly be and it was not there. She started to panic and I was about to (because there were about 10 other things I should have been working on then and a DVD hunt in our house can be a real undertaking!) but then I remembered that I now have a helper in that regard, Samuel! Lately I have found that his memory for the location of things in our house is quite extraordinary. Before I went any further, I asked Samuel, "Do you know where her DVD is?" He walked right over to where it was, picked it up and offered to put it in the DVD player for her. Crisis averted!

A little over a month ago I became the new Vice Chairman for our county's Special Education Advisory Committee. Cut and paste this site in your browser if you want to find out more about what the role of the advisory committee is (it is copyrighted so I don't want to do a direct link): http://www.peatc.org/Fact%20Sheets/seac.pdf There is a bit of a story behind this which I will not bore you with here except to summarize it briefly. Our committee was in need of a new chairman and I helped to nominate someone that I know for the position. I was quite surprised when the previous chairman then nominated me for the position of Vice Chairman, a position that I didn't even know existed.

Here I am, a homeschooling Mom, now in the position of advising the local public school system regarding special education! This is not a place I expected to find myself in. However, this is a good thing. I am still trying to get used to the idea and am slowly learning what all is expected of me. One of the first projects I am working on is getting together some kind of a website or yahoo group that will contain information and provide a means for parents to share information and get questions answered. Nothing like that exists for our immediate local area yet. I already have a group in place for the support group at my church, but this new group will be able to reach a wider audience. Recent events have shown that this could really be helpful for parents whose children are now reaching the age of "transition" out of the public school system to adulthood. I also think it will be a valuable resource for the parents of children who are newly diagnosed, no matter what their "special need" is.

In the last 6 months I have also come across two other support groups in our area that I am hoping to become more involved with. One is run by a Christian Church. The t-ball league we participated in over the summer was run by them and they are sponsoring a bowling league. What I particularly have enjoyed about this group so far is that Samuel's siblings have been able to come along and participate. That is so helpful! I don't like to "segregate" Samuel from his siblings to participate in things, but sometimes it is necessary. I wish that I could attend more of their support group meetings for parents, but have only made it to two of them so far.

The second support group I have come across is for autism. They run 8 week parent education groups that I have not been able to participate in yet. I am hoping to be able to participate in the session that will begin this January. A social group for children goes on while the parents attend the meetings and I am hoping that Samuel will be able to participate in it, along with his younger brother. This is the closest group to me geographically that I have found for autism so far. I am already on their yahoo group and have enjoyed getting to talk to other people in my area. I attended a Sensory Integration seminar that this group hosted this past Friday and finally got to meet a few people in person! It has been awkward for me having so much to say to these folks when I haven't even met them yet. I was particularly glad to meet the facilitator of the group, who up to that point I had only talked to on-line and on the telephone.

I am trying to have Samuel involved in Special Olympics basketball as well. We attended the first practise two weeks ago. Since I did not have a physical done yet for Samuel we could not go last week. I tried taking him for a physical this week but he would not cooperate completely with his pediatrician so the form went unsigned. We will try to complete the exam the week after Thanksgiving. That reminds me, I better call the coach to inform him that we will not be there today!

I am always complaining about how busy I am and how there aren't enough hours in the day, and now that is more true than ever! I'm being forced to learn time management skills, and am trying to exercise patience more than ever. It's not easy, but I should not complain. I have opportunities before me that I should be grateful for and should take advantage of.