A Facebook post I spotted this morning got me thinking. A youth worker was asking his ministry peers for ideas on what he could address during this week’s annual meeting with parents. What caught my attention was his use of the word annual. That word, when combined with parent meeting, once got me in big trouble. The……
I just texted these words to my 23-year old daughter who has autism. “Hi. I haven’t talked to you in a week. How are things?” Katie lives across town in a little house by herself. She loves it. It seems to be working for the whole family, but such a casual interaction with my child seems strange….
There are times when it feels like our life is one step forward and two steps back. The problem with us as humans is that we tend to concentrate on the two steps back, not the one step forward. If you don’t learn to break it down in a positive way, you will find yourself…
When Alec was first diagnosed, I became obsessed with finding out everything I could about autism. I researched every autism theory, every therapy and spent every waking minute on the phone or online with other parents trying to create the best possible plan for Alec’s care. If someone told me that they were providing their…
Splink 1: HELP! Ask your kids to complete a job that is too hard for them. (Give them a hard puzzle to complete. Ask them to stack ten blocks without them falling down. Give them a hard math problem to complete. The activity will depend on the age and skill of each child.) As they…
All the hot dogs, burgers and shakes you can consume. That sounds like the ultimate job perk to the average teenager, doesn’t it? My son certainly thought so. He doesn’t anymore. But before we get to that… Getting healthy as a family has been really fun for my kids (except the exact opposite) For…
I didn’t even hesitate when I saw the subject line in my inbox last week. With the words “The most powerful way to unclutter your life,” I was promptly lured into a click. Within minutes I was reading the article and mentally taking notes about the best ways to simplify my life. Some people…
Conversations Happen Over Blueberries and Bathwater “My husband died when my children were in preschool. He was sick for twelve hours with an illness the ER doctors misdiagnosed, and he died on our bedroom floor two days before Christmas. Overnight, my children lost their dad and I became a 31-year-old widow.” These are the…
Sometimes, as an attempt to comfort your heart as you are struggling through a new diagnosis, or even years afterward, friends or family might offer consolation by saying something along the lines of, “God chose to give you a child with autism because He knew you were strong enough”, or one of my personal favorites,…
So you might have noticed there’s this tension in parenting. Okay . . . you may have noticed, there are 1,000 tensions in parenting, but today I’m going to focus on just one. What tension you ask? The tension between the parent who wants to enforce the rules and the parent who wants to focus on…