With summer approaching, I’m making my poolside reading list for professional development. Having an understanding of how our kids’ minds work is so important. Today I’m sharing 5 books on my special needs parenting book list that help me understand my kids better.
I have always told myself that I would do what each kid needed, even if that was different for each child. This year, for a time, we had kids in both public school and homeschool. I got to experience that choice and I was surprised at how it felt. For my public school student it was a drastic change. He struggled, which made watching the transition even harder for me. There was no cheers when the bus arrived each morning for him.
the tools we had developed when they were a preschooler have been outgrown. Their triggers and struggles have changed; they need more support with social skills. They are also now more capable of being responsible for their own reactions.
A Sensory Diet is activities we can do at home to help him regulate their atypical need for sensory input. When you see special-needs kids rocking back and forth, banging into things and people, or flapping their hands, those are often signs that the kid is attempting (in socially awkward ways) to get sensory input that their brain is craving but isn’t getting.
Then I noticed the calendar: it was June. He would be 3 in August. Maybe it wasn’t OK that he couldn’t use a spoon effectively and we were still spoon-feeding him his applesauce and yogurt. Thus began a search for answers which ended with an Autism diagnosis.
