Special Needs Round-up: Floortime, Kangaroo care and Depeche Mode!

I am kicking this month’s special needs round-up with a blog that I consider to be the bible for parents of children with special or additional needs.

Special Needs Jungle is an absolutely amazing blog written by Tania and aims to help parents negotiate the special needs system in the UK.  Tania writes from personal experience having two boys diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome and having navigated and survived the system herself.  Every blog post that Tania writes is both informative and sensitive and she has also written a book on the subject. I decided to include this post The Benefits of ‘Floortime’ for Autism as it is a fairly new concept in the UK.  Tania explains; “the premise of Floortime is that an adult can help a child expand his circles of communication by meeting him at his developmental level and building on his strengths. Therapy is often incorporated into play activities – on the floor.”  Tania is also running a great competition for one of her readers to attend a Floortime workshop.

I was pointed to Cars on Repeat this week via the Parent Bloggers group on Facebook and I am so glad.  This wonderful post Pros and cons about Hanj’s little boy who is autistic, tackles the subject of applying for a Statement of Special Educational Needs.  I felt every bit of what she was writing as she explained the agony of filling in forms concentrating entirely on your child’s negatives.  Paperwork for Statements of Special Educational Needs and DLA require the parent/carer to explain, in detail, the shortcomings of their child.  It is heart breaking and brings it all home when you see it in writing, especially your own writing. So when in this post Hanj was able to garner a list of beautiful “pros” about her little boy, I smiled, laughed and cried! Good boy Mummy!

Having spent a large amount of time in a part of a developing country where disabled access and toilets are unheard of, I often applaud Western Europe’s empathy to the needs of the physically disabled.  So when I read the frustrations that has led C from Looking for Blue Sky to opening up the channels, albeit slight, to thinking about residential care, it jolts me backwards and makes me wonder why we are spending all this money on disabled facilities which, without proper and careful thinking, are actually useless for many of our disabled citizens.

When we talk about special and additional needs, there is often a group of children who are overlooked: premature babies; those babies who are born too small, too sick, too soon.  Kylie gave birth to Joseph at 27 weeks following severe pre-eclampsia.  Joseph weighed 1.7lbs – Not even a bag of sugar. This week Kylie writes about Kangaroo Care awareness day; the art of putting a baby skin to skin with the mother or other primary caregiver. Kylie is a huge advocate and was able to practice Kangaroo care with Joseph from 1 month old.  I love Kylie; she has opened me up in my ability to talk about Aleyna’s birth. Aleyna wasn’t early but she was in SCBU for 13 days from birth. I only saw Aleyna once in those 13 days as Turkish law prevents anyone except nurses entering intensive care. This is not rare in developing countries. Premature and SCBU babies are often denied positive physical contact and it’s important to maximise this wherever we can, positive touch is crucial.

This month the Brilliance in Blogging Finalists were announced and I was extremely proud to be amongst the Finalists in the “Inspire” category.  (A very tough and most brilliant group-I have no expectation of winning!) A fellow blogger in this category is someone who although I have never met I know will become a friend. Hayley who writes at Downs Side Up is the Mum of Natty, a beautiful little girl with Downs Syndrome.  Thanks to Hayley’s persistence and hard work, Natty is a model for a number of children’s clothes retailers and she is fabulous at it.  Hayley’s beautiful post The Power of a song describes a Depeche Mode track that she used to listen to whilst Natty was in SCBU and the feelings it invokes. I am listening to the song whilst writing this post.  Just stunning.

So there we are, as always, please link up with any posts you have. We really love reading them.

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