Dec 21, 2011 Posted by Jolene

How to Be an Effective Advocate for a Child with Special Needs

Guest blogger Ellen Stumbo has been thinking about an issue important to parents of kids with special needs: how to be an effective advocate. In today’s post, she shares about how her perception of effective advocacy has changed and mentions a good book put out by Wrights Law, an organization that trains parents to advocate for their kids in school. Am I an Effective Advocate? Speak up for those who... read more

Dec 20, 2011 Posted by Jolene

Gray’s Anatomy Raises EA/TEF Awareness

Do you remember guest blogger Christine Lester’s November series at DifferentDream.com? In Part 1, she described her emotions upon seeing the scars on her newborn son’s body. In Part 2, she talked about finally taking her baby home from NICU and grieving over his scars. The final post in the series was about how her perception of her son’s scars have changed over the years since his... read more

Dec 19, 2011 Posted by Jolene

Way to Go, Brian Rizzo!

Brian Rizzo is one cool dude. In 2008 when he was 14 years old, he was working on his Eagle Scout badge. Because his younger sister lives with autism, he developed a special needs library for his church parish. Like I said, one cool dude. But Wait, There’s More! Turns out, that project was only his first contribution to the special needs community. He then worked with his parents to develop learning... read more

Dec 16, 2011 Posted by Jolene

Medical Debt and Kids with Special Needs

Our son’s first medical bills arrived over 29 years ago, and I’m still recovering from the sticker shock. $50,000 was a fortune for a couple earning less than $20,000 annually. In the years since, the cost of caring for medically fragile kids has sky rocketed. How do parents deal with the astronomical bills for kids today? Praying for Parker Tammy at www.prayingforparker.com addressed the... read more

Dec 15, 2011 Posted by Jolene

40 Must See YouTube Special Education Videos

Special education is a hot topic on YouTube these days, but finding the videos worth watching can be time consuming at best and futile at worst. So I am exceedingly thankful for special education graduate students assigned the task of compiling lists of worthwhile special ed videos. Enter Matt Holden Matt Holden is one of those grad students (or at least I assume he is) who found www.DifferentDream.com... read more