Learning To Advocate For Your Child

What do you think when you hear the word "Advocate?" Do you think fight, battle or even stress? These feelings could be harming the effectiveness of your advocacy at your child's next case conference. After several years of attending case conferences for two of my children and taking some classes, I have found the following a sure way of making you case conference a success...

Read Article...

Shabby Chic Decorating With Family Heirlooms

The last few years, we have had a handful of deaths. Sad as it is, it leaves some of us lucky recipients to heirlooms that often mean so much to us. Something as simple as a spool of string all the way to pearls. There are things that are passed down thru families that mean a lot. I thankfully, come from a family of crafty and fashionable women that have left me treasures that some would laugh about. But I know as I use those leftover beads on a pillow or other project, I'm using beads that were leftover from making my Great Aunt's wedding dress...

Continue Article

I Found Life In Your Death

How horrible does THAT sound? For many years I found shame in the fact that this was the very "theme" to fit my life at the time. No one like my soulful friend deserved to die the way she did. I felt like I could have prevented it...I should have reached out more and been a better friend. I should have never let her leave that night. Her daughter will never know the way her smile TRULY warmed you to the core and was so incredibly contagious. By 25 I had realized that friendships are not always what they seem and the truest of true friends are extremely rare. Michelle was a true friend...and I had not had a friend so true since I'd been 17. So, to know that her death saved my life was truly bittersweet...

Continue Article...

Nintendo DS Lite Game Review Brain Age 2

Brain Age 2, More Brain Training, has the same idea as the original, of course, striving to give you some brain stimulating mental exercises every day. So, instead of sitting around consuming all the Christmas leftovers, why not put you brain to work while having a little fun?

All the glitches from the original have been fixed...

Continue Article...

Surviving The Holidays With An Autistic Child

Tis’ the season…to be stressed out! The Christmas season is stressful for most people. There’s the shopping in over crowded stores and malls for that perfect gift, stressing about money or the mounting credit card bills. Maybe you have the stress of balancing, or arguing, over which families homes you are going to celebrate at or how you’re going to accommodate everyone in your home on Christmas Eve.

When you have a child with Autism, all these stressors are magnified tenfold. While Wal-Mart tends to already be a stressful place for a lot of Autistic children (high, open ceilings with tons of fluorescent bulbs), add in 20 times more people, even more noise and chaos, and the bell ringer from the Salvation Army that our children become so fascinated with that we can barely tear them away without a meltdown. Then we start worrying about how our child will handle going to someones home for a Christmas party where there will be so many people, and so many strange people. “How will my child react? How am I going to deal with questions, stares, etc when he has a meltdown? What will I do when he shows no interest for his gifts?” Just thinking about all those obstacles and past Christmas disasters can send me into a panic attack! How about you?

It really doesn’t have to be this stressful for us. As in everyday life with my Autistic children, I have learned to find ways of turning most everything we do into a learning experience/therapy for the boys...

Continue Article...

How To Set Up A Planted Aquarium

Okay, I admit it. I’m an aquarium addict. Our home now has three, fully planted fish tanks and I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of my oldest sons’ new tank for his Bearded Dragon. Why? Because I want to turn his old tank into what my husband has made me promise to be my last fish tank. While he enjoys my tanks as much as I do, he is perplexed as to why I feel the need to keep setting up more. I just think he’s still salty over my replacing the bedroom television with a 10 Gallon Red Cherry Shrimp tank.

Many people keep aquariums and use fake, plastic plants and different fake ornaments, thinking that keeping live plants will be to hard or time consuming. Or, maybe they’ve bought plants from the pet store and stuck them down into their gravel, only to watch them wither and die. The truth is, if you set your tank up properly for plants, they will not only basically take care of themselves, they will also help in the upkeep of your aquarium...

Continue Article...

Strangers & The Stress They Create For Autistic Children

It’s 4:30 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon. I’ve ran several errands with two of my children. My tween daughter and I, with my Autistic 4 year old set out to Lowe’s, Wal-Mart and then Pet Smart. All were planned to be quick, efficient, and all without pushing my youngest sons comfort levels overboard. A total meltdown with him leads to me fighting a panic attack…there’s been a few shopping trips that have left us both sobbing for a few minutes after we were secured into our seatbelts. But we do the best we can do.

So, we’ve ran these other errands and he’s done so well. He was good in the store as I picked out the fish and plants I wanted and I was feeling so accomplished with our outing. We get to the counter and there is the woman who has worked there for many years and has just always been an unpleasant woman. I could really care less but she’s rude to my children and corrects them like a parent should…a total stranger, disciplining my children? I think not...

Continue Article...