Blog introduction

This blog is dedicated to all parents that have children with special needs; specifically those parents who have a child/children who has recently been diagnosed with special needs.  It has been my personal experience working with parents of recently diagnosed child/children who inspired me to write this blog.  Many parents don’t know where or who to turn to for help when their children are first diagnosed.  When a situation like this arises people often turn to friends in similar situations for help, but what if you don’t have any friends in the same situation?

Do you or a friend of yours have a child with special needs and feel that there has to be help out there but don't know where or how to find it?  Then this maybe the site for you.  Aside from providing parents with general information I want parents to come here to converse, to share experiences, to specifically ask me questions.  I may not know the answer to all of the questions; however I am determined to use all of my resources to find the best solution possible for your individual needs.  The question isn't "does help exist?" its "what help exists and how can I get it?”

I directly help parents and provide them with information a daily basis. The goal of this blog is to provide parents with a simple to understand format and that is the goal of this blog.  This blog is meant to serve as a guide for parents with special needs and designed to help parents effectively navigate "the system" by empowering parents with information.  That is why the blog is entitled the Special Needs Hidden Handbook (snhiddenhandbook).

If you like the sound of the content please continue reading via the categories link in the right column, follow via email, comment on the forum or share with your friends with the social bookmarking buttons below each post by clicking on the buttons.

Community Calendar

Please everyone come check out the community calendar that I've started by clicking here. The link will be on this page and also as a tab at the top of the blog labeled "Calendar". I figured out a way that anyone (with a gmail account) can add to the calendar.  Feel free to follow the link to add events yourself by clicking here  If you do not have a calendar than please email me at snhiddenhandbook@gmail.com and tell me the information about the event (please be as thorough as possible so parents will be able to take advantage of the event like the location and times) and I will be glad to add it to the calendar. I want this to be a community calendar, one that families can look at and know what different activities the community has to offer. There are often many activities available just not many people know about them and that is something I want to fix.  I have posted about a few of the lesser known community activities like the sensory friendly films or Special Olympics.

This calendar is a work in progress and doesn't have many activities up on it, though with time, and everyone's help I am hoping that will change.

I'm not a mechanic.

Recently I moved to a new town and have been meeting a variety of new people.  During the getting to know you pleasantries, someone always asks what I do. The conversation usually sounds something like this:

Stranger: So what do you do?
Me: I am a speech-language pathologist.
Stranger: Blank stare…Wait like a speech teacher?  You fix kid’s lisps and make people who stutter stop stuttering.  I used to have a speech teacher.  I couldn’t say my r’s.  Is that what you do?
Me: A little but I actually work more with kids that have developmental disabilities, like autism or cerebral palsy.
Stranger: (slightly confused) You can fix kids like that?

And this is where the conversation gets hard.  I know what the good natured stranger means.  And yes technically my training as a speech language pathologist has taught me techniques to help teach children skills that will help remediate speech and language difficulties often associated with these and many other developmental disabilities.  Yet, I can’t ever in good conscience answer ‘yes’ to this question.  To say ‘yes’ would imply that children with disabilities are somehow broken.  You can’t fix a person like you fix a car.  A child that learns to communicate verbally is no more or less ‘fixed’ than the child who no longer speaks with a lisp or the individual who has just learned to point.  Speech-language pathologist cannot change who your child is.  We do not increase or decrease their general awesomeness.  All we can do is teach them skills that will hopefully allow them to communicate with those around them in the most effective and efficient way.  We, speech language pathologists, cannot fix what is not broken… but when we do our job right, we just may get to enhance.

-Megan, M.S., CCC-SLP