Geinene Carson

Having a special needs child requires a certain amount of organization to cope with the endless piles of paperwork. In just the first five years of our daughter’s life, more paperwork has accumulated than in my life altogether. I never imagined the avalanche of white that would follow doctor appointments, test results, therapy sessions, medical bills, healthcare claims, prescriptions, as well as school, grant, and scholarship applications. I soon found myself overwhelmed and drowning in piles of important details. Too often I was caught unprepared without detailed information of my daughter’s medical history or current care readily available for inquiring professionals. This created significant hiccups at times. I already had to wait months to see certain specialists, and my face-to-face time with

When your child has special needs, much of the day, and sometimes even the night, is spent taking care of someone extremely dependent upon you. A significant amount of energy and time is spent planning and strategizing to stay ahead of your child’s needs. Though I became almost intuitive in recognizing the signs and red flags of my own child’s health, I simultaneously became less in tune and downright negligent of my own. For the first few years of our daughter’s life, I did not manage my personal needs well, if at all. I dove into advocacy mode intensely and before I knew what hit me, I was suffering from sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, and physical health issues. What I didn’t realize, until

Finding the right school to meet the unique challenges of our special needs child has been like trying to locate a needle in a haystack. I spent the better part of three years researching our options and kept them all on the table: private, public, montessori, inclusion, special ed exclusive, etc. I scoured school websites, engaged in forums, actively sought recommendations from therapists and various professionals, arranged a slew of school tours, and enrolled our daughter in a wide variety of educational settings throughout pre-school. While each place we tried had its strengths and weaknesses, none seemed like the best fit for our daughter’s needs. Some schools loved her well but didn’t have enough experience or expertise to appropriately challenge and develop

I belong to a game-playing family, a love that is especially exercised around the holidays when looking for gift ideas and spending wintery nights at home with the family. With our oldest son in the middle of elementary school, we are just beginning to play more strategic and complicated games. However, our younger, kindergarten-age daughter has special needs that affect her gross and fine motor skills, as well as cognitive and verbal abilities. None the less, we are determined to involve her in our board game binges. No more sitting to the side watching the rest of us; therefore, my newest mission involves finding games that will include and challenge her at the appropriate level. This has required a decent amount of research

Words and how we use them have a special emphasis in our family. Our son, a chatterbox, expresses himself to anyone who will listen. He formulates every thought that comes into his head aloud. An engaging storyteller, words effortlessly fall out of his mouth, creative and abundant. Yet for our daughter, who is nonverbal due to a genetic disorder, it takes great effort and concentration to communicate even the simplest of thoughts. We usually try to decipher her needs and desires from a mixture of gestures, signs, and utterances. Our children, ages four and seven, are completely different individuals beginning to engage uniquely with the world around them. Words or no words, they each have a valuable voice. And when I say