America the Beautiful| Through the Autism Car Window

Hi Everyone. Are you getting ready for a vacation? I thought you might like to read about the family trip that changed our lives. Oh, Beautiful for Spacious Skies… From the moment I was pregnant, my husband Tom dreamed of the day he could retrace his childhood...

On the last day of Junior School| Inclusion

Tommy is in the second row. Of course, Aaron is the red head in the middle of the picture who refused to look at the camera. My last post Teachers| Inclusion or Segregation started an interesting discussion. It reminded me of the letter I wrote to the Principal of...

Aaron’s Olympic Moment

Is summer different for kids with and without disabilities? As parents of children with disabilities, it is difficult to know “What is realistic?” “What goals do I want?”. I have always found it helpful to measure “normalization” by...

Gifts|Grandma Gets a Thong

Helen Otten, my mom, died April 3 at the age of almost 93. I’m posting this in her memory. I’m also reminded of the importance of family. The twelfth day of Christmas is Jan. 6th–Little Christmas, The Feast of the Magi. Actually, it’s all the...

Aaron’s Community Building Mix

photo credit: Holtsman Aaron’s Building Community Mix Making New Friends In my previous post: St. Nick| Community Building and Batman Socks, I talked about using the folk-story Stone Soup to begin a discussion about differences, scarcity, gifts and building a...

St. Nick and the Batman socks

St. Nick and the Batman Socks photo credit: frannie60 In Christmas 1981, Cincinnati Public Schools was involved in two class-action lawsuits. Our family was caught up in both of them. The first concerned the right of Aaron, our then seven year old son, who had an IQ...