How time flies.
My first post on this blog, many moons ago, was when the Monster turned four, and well… here we are yet again. (He’s not at a place where I can tease him in the vein of Tangled and insist that it can’t be his birthday since he just had one last year, since he simply won’t get it, but…) Continue reading
One of the banes of student life has to be homework. Even the Monster, who’s in a specialized school, gets homework on a near daily basis to reinforce what he’s going over in class. It’s rarely very much, and it is appropriate to what’s on his IEP, but it’s homework nonetheless. Continue reading
Every year around this time, we have the same discussion – are we really going to make the Monster observe Pesach?
And every year, we get bogged down in the same arguments. Personal meaning versus tradition, and the level of comprehension… Continue reading
Taking a trip with the kids is nothing new for us – we’ve tried to fit some kind of real trip in to the kids’ schedule every year, as we try to keep things as ‘normal’ as we can, even in the situation. None of these really have been big ‘vacation-trip’ things like a lot of other families with children our kids’ ages do, though.
But, to every thing and all. We’ve decided to take the plunge and plan a real vacation-trip. Continue reading
I… think it’s actually been a while since I last talked about the Monster and curling. Whoa.
Quick recap – for those who haven’t been around for a while, I curl semi-competitively myself. R and the Monster have been curling in our local club’s Middle Rockers program for the better part of two seasons now, and the Monster is the only child with a developmental disability that is in the program. This has us running into interesting issues now and again, due to the Monster’s deficits, but… when you go from a place of ‘assume competence’ and ‘adapt where you can’… Continue reading
Before anyone worries – it’s just been a very busy couple of weeks here, on this side of the screen. (All the better reason, if you don’t follow the Facebook page or the Twitter account, to do so – I’ve not been wholly quiet while I’ve been gone.) . But I’m going to try, now that things are calming down offline, to get back to a regular cadence and…
What? What have we been up to? Oh!
For starters, we took in an inclusive religious service last weekend, in advance of Purim. Continue reading
As I mentioned last week, the Monster and I were offered the opportunity to catch a Ravens game, thanks to the kindness of a donor at The Arc Baltimore. Last night was the game, and so we went.
I love football. (I love most sports, frankly.) As I mentioned, I grew up getting to go to sporting events now and again – from baseball to football to hockey and basketball – and seeing sports live is something I rather enjoy. We’ve taken the Monster to baseball games, largely minor-league, previously… and it’s definitely easier when you are in a smaller facility where you can walk about and still see the field (and definitely more so when you’re going to these events as part of a group of children in similar situations). A football stadium is not one of these kinds of things. Continue reading
I’m going to do something that might be… ill-advised next weekend, but reminds me a lot of my childhood.
A fond memory of my childhood was going to sports events with my father. Dad had season tickets to the local basketball and football teams, and we had neighbors who gave us tickets to go to the occasional baseball game. As a result, I spent a lot of time seeing sports live – the way they’re really meant to be seen – and… well, given that I grew up further north than where I live now, a lot of the football, therefore, was outside in the winter, bundled down in a seat and cheering on my team, and as a relatively neurotypical child, I could easily handle being out there in the cold and crowd for a few hours. Continue reading
One of the truisms about having children in general – and especially when you have children with special needs – is that being a parent can do horrible things to your relationship in terms of giving time for one another.
I’m not saying that I regret having kids – the Monster and R are wonderful critters who make life fun, and I adore being a father and spending time with them. But, it definitely puts a cramp on spending meaningful time with my wife, both in terms of mood and energy, and when you factor in the attempts we make to still sustain independent lives for ourselves in addition to our marriage… it’s a lot.
So a while ago, the wife and I decided that we had to make an attempt on a regular basis to actually get away and spend time together. Continue reading
It’s been a few months now of ABA for the Monster.
I’ll admit that… well, we came into it without my having a very good idea of what we’d get out of it, to be honest. I’ve heard about ABA – applied behavior analysis – before, and we’d not availed ourselves of it because we didn’t know how to fit it into our lives. That my insurance through work happens to pay for a lot of it was the kicker to get us to rearrange our lives to fit it in, and we’ve gone with the theory of ‘that which is not harmful and might work is worth trying’, so… Continue reading