It seems like the older one gets, the more interesting coincidences occur. For example, when I showed up for my 20th high school reunion, I noticed a person that I had been working with for about 4 years. Our high school was in a city two hours away from where we both lived and worked. I had no idea that we had even gone to the same high school, much less graduated the same year. We both had quite a laugh over that!
One of the more interesting coincidences of recent note is that the doggie daycare the Cooper now goes to used to be the regular daycare that my children attended! Here is their picture on the first day of one of their elementary school years:
And here is Cooper having a blast at that same facility (granted, there have been some major changes). Cooper is the one hogging the pool!
So what interesting coincidences have you experienced?
Life support was removed from Corey's birthmother on Tuesday of this week, but apparently she didn't need it anyway. She is still alive!
I don't know how she went from no discernable brain activity last Friday to shaking her head up and down and side to side in response to yes/no questions.
Actually, it reminds me of my ex-husband. People who one would expect to not live very long given their addictive life styles seem to live much longer than anyone would ever have thought.
Corey seems to have relaxed a bit, but there are still no good expectations for his birthmother's future. But who knows, she's already surprised everyone....
I'm sure Corey would appreciate your continued prayers.
This has got to be one of the coolest kids I have ever seen! Funny thing, I could easily superimpose Ronnie's face over this kid's face because I can see Ronnie begin driven in exactly the same way. I'm just hoping Ronnie doesn't visit my blog today because I am not ready for a heart attack!
We parents of children with disabilities spend a lot of time talking and writing about the lack of accessibility and accommodations for our children. I know that at times I have gotten down right angry when, for example, non-disabled movie-goers use the handicapped seating at the theater or when I can't find a close parking spot. But compared to some people in Africa, what we experience seems like nothing more than a mild annoyance.
The subject of disability in Africa is not often discussed in the media, but a new documentary film aims to address this.
The film, Body and Soul, was shot in Mozambique's capital Maputo and follows the day-to-day lives of three young disabled people.
It reveals the challenges and discrimination they face - some children in Mozambique are not sent to school for example - but also reveals the strength and determination of each of the film's main characters.
My sweet Ashley can use inappropriate language quite well. She signs it instead of speaking it, but I learned a long time ago, that not only was she making the signs correctly, she was using them in the correct context.
I've never really known where she learned those inappropriate signs. Most of them were ones I had never seen or used. Keep in mind that she is deafblind. More than likely she wasn't seeing the signs too clearly, even from her peers. But somehow she has learned them, and uses them well.
I may now have a few more clues into the functioning of her brain that helped her learn the signs and learn to use them appropriately. Checkout this post from a blog titled, "Wired Science". This is fascinating - well, at least to me!
In the brains of people blind from birth, structures used in sight are still put to work — but for a very different purpose. Rather than processing visual information, they appear to handle language.
Linguistic processing is a task utterly unrelated to sight, yet the visual cortex performs it well.
“It suggests a kind of plasticity that’s even broader than the kinds observed before,” said Marina Bedny, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s a really drastic change. It suggests there isn’t a predetermined function an area can serve. It can take a wide range of possible functions.”
In a study published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bedny’s team monitored the brain activity of five congenitally blind individuals engaged in language-intensive tasks.
Immense neurological plasticity was suggested by research conducted in the late 1990s on “rewired” ferrets — after their optical nerves were severed and rerouted into their auditory cortices, they could still see — but such studies, already ethically troubling in animals, would be unconscionable in humans.
Instead, researchers have used brain imaging to study plasticity resulting from natural sensory deprivation in people. They’ve found that the visual cortices of blind people become active as they read Braille. It wasn’t clear, however, whether this was a function of Braille’s spatial demands, which overlap with the spatial aspects of sight, or a radical repurposing of supposedly specialized areas.
In Bedny’s study, the brains of blind people were analyzed as they listened to complete sentences — a relatively high-level comprehension task. Then they were given lesser linguistic challenges, from listening to lists of unrelated words to hearing sentences played backwards, or trying to comprehend grammatically structured speech containing nonsense words.
The results were twofold. Blind people’s visual cortices clearly responded to language, not to space. Moreover, they were most active in response to high-level language demands, just as the brain’s “traditional” language centers are.
Implications of the findings are many. Some neuroscientists have proposed that human brains are hard-wired for language, with specific regions evolved for the task. While our brains are obviously well-suited for language, its performance by visual centers suggests that more than hard-wiring is at work.
“Language is a property that emerges out of the system, rather than a magic-bullet solution from one brain area,” said Bedny.
Indeed, the brains of congenitally blind people may even hint at the human brain’s early state, with “visual” centers open for processing different types of information, and only later becoming involved in vision.
Bodny is now using behavioral tests to investigate in greater detail how blind people process language. “We really want to know what sort of things are blind people better at,” she said. “Parsing complicated sentences, with different grammatical structure? Might they be better at resolving ambiguities? If they’re listening to several things at a time, can they parse two speech streams rather than one? We don’t know the answer to those questions yet.”
Virginia Tech University has been working with the National Federation of the Blind to develop a vehicle which can be driven by someone who is blind. From a prototype in 2009 to driving the Daytona Speedway in January of this year, it’s truly amazing to watch.
The Today Show did a feature this past weekend on the car and the driver, and if you didn’t know better, you’d swear the driver was not blind.
Here is a YouTube video that explains the technology behind the vehicle.
When Ashley finds out about this she will be pestering me to get her one!! She is my child who would love to jump in the car and go driving everywhere. She is also the one who would probably get a speeding ticket within the first week of driving.
But the child I want to convince to learn to drive is Ronnie. He’s not blind, but he believes that he cannot ever drive because of his spina bifida and the fact that he uses a wheelchair. I tell him all the time that there are special hand controls for cars, and he just signs, “silly, no there aren’t.”
So where does a person that needs to use hand controls for a car learn to drive? Perhaps if I could show him such a place, he would believe me. Confidence and belief in his abilities are not his strongest points, but I aim to change that!
Oh, and one more thought, how would a blind person get a driver’s license if they can’t pass the eye test given at DMV???
Who knew that the tiny little girl I brought home 14 years ago - the tiny little girl who couldn't tolerate her nails being cut unless she was under anesthesia - the tiny little girl who hated to have her hair brushed - would one day be sitting at the hair salon having her brows waxed!
She looks a little distressed in this picture, but truly she wasn't. She giggled after it was over and kept signing that she was beautiful!! Miss Arlene and Miss Amy did a wonderful job!
Chip has always done things on his time schedule. He ignored rules such as when he was supposed to start walking as a child - he started at 8 months and I was thinking I would have at least a year before I had to start chasing him. He learned to talk when he was good and ready and had something to say. He didn't let peer pressure influence any of his actions in either middle school or high school. Although he did get his learner's permit when all his same-age peers were getting theirs, he felt no pressure to get his license or even start driving. And I have never had any worries that he would be influenced to experiment with cigarettes, alcohol or drugs.
Chip has also been an excellent money manager since he first learned what money was. Once he started working, he followed the advice so many others don't - pay yourself first. He always has a reasonable balance in his savings account, and he obsessively researches almost every purchase.
So once he finally did decide he was ready to get his license and drive, he was in a great position for purchasing a vehicle. As always, he did his research, and he approached the salesman at the car dealership armed with the price he intended to pay. The salesman, the dealership manager, and the financial manager kept commenting on how prepared he was, how impressed they were, and how they wish their 20 year olds were more like him. Oh, and he did get the price he wanted plus a few other perks thrown in also.
So, at barely 20 years old, a full-time student in college (maintaining Dean's List status), and working full-time, Chip purchased his first car! Needless to say, I am very proud of my boy!!
The instructional assistant for a student labeled (incorrectly) as 'severe and profound' cut her finger last Wednesday. The student signed 'help' and 'nurse' and then led the instructional assistant by the hand to the school clinic.
No big deal, right?
Wrong - it was a very big deal.
That student, my Ashley, who has been told over and over again that her communication is very limited, who has been told by an orientation and mobility instructor that her only traveling option was to use a sighted guide and not a cane, and who has been described as living in her own little world, oblivious to all that is around her, did something very important.
Of course, I have known about her ability to care, her compassion, her reasoning skills, and her ability to travel as a blind child for too many years to count.
Maybe now everyone will believe me when I tell them of Ashley's abilities and potential.
If I had $150,000 and could fly to New Zealand, I would definitely get one of these for Ronnie! (See the video after the text).
The news release from Engadget.com states:
"New Zealand isn't exactly known for being a hotbed of tech innovation, but this set of bionic legs might just realign that perception a little bit. The product of seven years of development work, the Rex exoskeleton is capable of supporting the full weight of a person -- making it suitable for paraplegics -- and moving him or her around in a familiar bipedal fashion. It's operated using a joystick and control pad and is simple enough for handicapped users to self-transfer in and out of. The best news, perhaps, is that it's about to go on sale in its home country this year, with an international launch following in 2011. The worst news? Probably the $150,000 (US) initial asking price, but then we'd hardly say we're qualified to judge the value of being able to walk again."
