EmpoweringParents.com

From the day we took my son home from the hospital, I knew it was going to be a wild ride.   He cried all night long and didn’t stop for six months.   He was adopted and we knew little about his birth parents’ medical history and none of their family’s history.  After six months, my son was a happy but very impulsive, hyper little boy.  If a thought crossed his mind he was carrying it out no matter how often we said “NO!”  He was always very good at approaching new people and making friends.  Staying friends was more of a problem.  His lack of impulse control did not allow him to realize how much he was irritating and sometimes hurting others.  Play turned into someone’s feelings getting hurt because he would not stop when they asked him to stop when the play turned too rough for them.  Little did I know at that time that I was set to micromanage his life from there on out.

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As a parent of a special needs child, one often does not know where to begin. It all can depend on how old the child is when he or she is diagnosed. If a child is age 3 or older, one of the first things a parent should do is to request his or her child to have an individualized education plan (IEP).

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One of my main goals as a mom — and in my opinion, one of the most important qualities you can have as a parent — is to be more flexible and adaptable. Now, when I say “flexible” I don’t mean that you should throw rules, limits, or structure out the window. What I mean is that we all need to be open to trying new ideas and techniques when the old ones aren’t working anymore.

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When our son TJ was nearing the end of 7th grade, he had not yet earned any AR*, or “Accelerated Reading” points.  In an attempt to resolve this before the deadline, we created scheduled reading times and reading quantities (number of pages per day) but he still could not finish his books or pass an AR test.

With the end of the grading period approaching, I decided I would read his AR book to him so I could discuss each chapter with him in hopes that it would help him remember the story better.

One evening as we were discussing a chapter I’d just read to him, I was getting very frustrated because he could not tell me much about the story. I told him, “Just picture it in your head so you don’t have to memorize it all… picture it like a movie in your head.”  He told me he couldn’t do that and my response was, “Of course you can!  You’ve seen lots of movies.  You know how it works.”

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Dear PSL:

I am at my wit’s end. I have been trying to get my 19 year old son to get a job for months now. He says he’s trying, but I can’t be sure, as I am not home during the day to supervise him. I also just found out that he has been lying to me about finishing his high school diploma online. I try to motivate him to get a job, but he just doesn’t seem to care. He’s not a bad kid. I just find that I am starting to resent working so hard to put a roof over his head when he is doing nothing all day, and then lying to me about it. What can I do to make him care?

–Pulling My Hair Out

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My name is Melody, and I’m the mother of three children — two of which are diagnosed ADHD, as am I.  I’m excited to begin blogging here on Empowering Parents. Today’s disjointed society separates us from one another, yet through websites such as this we can be the village that it takes to raise our children.  The things I hope to blog about, muse on and mull over — regarding my parenting children with behavioral challenges — may bring about comments from others that I hope will make me think, learn, and grow as both a parent and as a person.  I hope to put out there the truth that I experience. Maybe it can help other parents to see that they are not alone either.  Thanks for joining me.

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Grandparents in Lagos, Florida are fighting to keep their 6 year-old grand daughter Kimberly from being evicted from their retirement community.

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A Nielsen Co. reports kids are watching more television than ever and television viewing for children ages 2-11 is the highest since 1995.  Kids ages 6-11 watch 28 hours a week with about 4.5 hours on DVD.  And worse, kids age 2-5 are watching 32 hours—yes, that’s even more than the 6-11 year-olds, presumably because they’re not in school.

I’m not surprised about the Nielsen numbers.

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