Tips Parenting

Pamela Merritt, 40, talked about being co-guardian with her sister of her 42-year-old brother, who has profound autism, at the Healthminder day at BlogHer 13 in Chicago."I was five years into the guardianship when I said 'this is for life,' Pamela of St. Louis, said. "I have to pace myself. There is no end game."Pamela and her sister live about 15 minutes from her brother's group home, "so we can drop by unannounced and give him an active social life," she said. "If I didn't have my brother...

With Jen Reeves, Born Just Right (back left), and Julia Roberts, Support for Special Needs (front left), and Christina Shaver (Hopeful Parents).Today I was part of a BlogHer panel about how our online stories about raising children with special needs can build community and pull disability issues into the mainstream, changing perceptions. I have "known" Jen and Julia and Christina in the blogosphere for some time, and it was an honour to meet these women, each a powerhouse in...

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We are at our favourite neighbourhood café. A family of four arrives. Mom wears a long colourful sun dress, her hair in a perfect up-do. She pushes a high-end stroller. Blonde-haired boy runs to grab a table. "Don't touch" Mom squeaks when she sees the pile of dirty plates in front of him. Boy smiles and gives the thumbs up.Mom and Dad stand in line to order. Preschooler in the stroller wears a short pink sun dress, thick dark hair (just like Mom's) pulled back in a pony. She extends her legs...

Oh boy.It's worse than I thought.The hatred against people with intellectual disabilities.Three cases in point.In January a 26-year-old man with Down syndrome suffocated to death in a movie theatre in Frederick, Maryland when he was handcuffed and pushed to the ground by three county sheriff deputies who were working extra hours as mall security. Robert Ethan Saylor—known as Ethan—had just seen "Zero Dark Thirty" and was angry that he couldn't see the movie again. His worker couldn't convince...

One in four children with cerebral palsy has moderate to severe pain that limits activities, according to a study published yesterday in Pediatrics.Caregivers filled out a survey and doctors reported the presence and cause of pain in 252 youth aged three to 19 in this Holland Bloorview study.Hip pain and tight muscles were the most frequent causes of pain “and have specific treatments,” says lead researcher Dr. Darcy Fehlings, physician director of the Child Development Program at Holland Bloorview...

Yesterday Ben and Ken and I went shopping.We started off in the basement of Buffalo to get some sale shirts. There were a couple of oversized couches facing each other. On each sat a large male mannequin (grey-tone skin) in jeans and a t-shirt, legs crossed, hands on thighs, leaning in, heads tilted, as if in conversation. Ben immediately went and sat beside one and shook his hand. Ken sat with the other.I did a quick walk of the floor and pulled some shirts I thought the boys might like. When...

Ben's favourite weather is rain. When he gets up in the morning he looks for clouds and dark sky out his window. He's been known to appeal to the heavens, clasping and shaking his hands, for rain. I'm not sure why he likes it so much. Perhaps because it's cool and refreshing: he tends to overheat in the sun and doesn't mind getting wet. Probably because it strikes him as funny: the skies opening up with water, as we humans scurry for cover, the potential for jumping in a large puddle, the tap tapping...

Things are out of control at my house when I can no longer see the floor in my daughter’s room. “I don’t have any clean clothes!” she claims, though it is her responsibility to maintain and to wash her clothes. Things are out of control in my world when I find myself biting my tongue far too many times to accommodate a brief bit of teenage irritation “I don’t know, Mom.” “I don’t care, Mom,” she says with an eye roll, though the rule is to be respectful to one another. When I find myself frustrated,...

Eric Smart (white shirt, back row, on the right) is an occupational therapy (OT) student at the University of Toronto and a familiar face at our BLOOM speaker nights. Eric says he gets more from hearing directly from parents and people with disabilities at BLOOM nights than “from textbooks and class lectures. The most meaningful lessons have come directly from the experiences, the honesty, and the hearts of BLOOM speakers—parents, children, an actor and actress, a business entrepreneur, a former...

You’re a newly qualified psychiatrist working on an AIDS unit in a hospital. You’re HIV-positive, but you’ve kept your diagnosis a secret.You’re in a meeting with other clinicians when a doctor refers to patients on the unit as SHPOS: “subhuman pieces of shit.”You remain silent.It’s a few years before you can openly state: “I am one of them.”You do it in a presentation called The HIV-Infected Psychiatrist: Clinical Issues at an American Psychiatric Association conference.This is the story...