What About The Leftovers?

Leftovers – lots of leftovers – turkey, gravy, yams, stuffing, green beans, rolls. One of the best things about Thanksgiving dinner is having leftovers for the next few days. One of my favorites is a hot turkey sandwich – leftover turkey piled high on leftover yeast rolls and then covered in leftover gravy. After a few days, we are driven to get creative with the leftovers, but to me, they are still just as good.

Did you know that a lot of the children in foster care, children waiting for a family to call their own, feel like leftovers? They have watched their friends and sometimes their family members get adopted, but they still wait. The feel like the leftovers that everyone has grown tired of.

But just as we get creative with our Thanksgiving leftovers, we can get creative with the children who wait for a forever family. It’s certainly not going to be easy to bring a teenager into your family, a teenager who has been rejected so many times that he will try to reject you. It’s not easy to bring the group of three siblings home to your quiet, clean house, but trust me, they won’t have much to bring with them to mess up your house. Or the child with significant disabilities that is spending her life in an institutional setting – all she wants, even if she can’t verbalize it, is to wake each morning with the knowledge that she is loved and wanted.

As National Adoption Awareness Month draws to a close, I implore you to examine your lives closely and see if there is any way possible that you can bring home a child who believes he is a leftover that no one wants.

Happy Thanksgiving

This is a tough year to be thankful. I’ve even stopped watching the nightly news because the continued talks about the failing economy, home foreclosures, layoffs and such depress me greatly. Yes, I am probably just sticking my head in the sand, but now, especially during the holidays, I don’t need to be depressed.

I don’t believe there is any person among us who has not been touched in some way by the grim economic situation this country is facing. But, I have to keep telling myself, and my sons because they worry also, that this is part of a cycle. Perhaps it is time for the greedy world of wants and not needs to get a wake up call. It’s hard though, especially for a child, when they haven’t experienced the full cycle before.

I do believe that as parents we need to make sure our children do not get too preoccupied and concerned with the gloom and doom. We can create lessons to be learned, but we, or at least I, don’t want to create anxiety.

So for today, let’s all find something for which we can be thankful. Be it small things or big things, I believe we can all find something. Share those things with your children, and ask them to share with you their list of thanks.

Our world, though troubled, is still a beautiful, special place to live and grow.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Special Exposure Wednesday

Two years ago, I started this blog with a story about Ashley dancing with a boy. That boy, Miles, was her first real crush, and while they attended middle school together, whenever I said his name, she would get the biggest smile on her face.

Unfortunately, Miles moved to high school this year. But last Friday, Ashley ran into Miles at a local grocery story. You can tell from the expression on her face that if he said, "Ashley, let's run away to Alaska, shoot moose, and watch turkeys being slaughtered", she would immediately start packing her rifle.

She definitely has not forgotten Miles...



Make sure to visit 5 Minutes For Special Needs to see all the other great SEW photos!

Dog Brain on Drugs

Adjusting to life with Rocky dog has been quite an adventure so far – both for the family and for Rocky. The dog which came home from the SPCA with us was calm and well-behaved. Once he figured out that we had to go to school and work 5 days a week, he was a little miffed. And he expressed his displeasure by destroying his crate – actually 3 crates – and wreaking havoc around the house.

The vet calls it extreme separation anxiety. And on Friday, Rocky was prescribed seizure medicine – Phenabarbitol – to help ‘calm’ him. The vet called in the prescription to our local pharmacy, and the pharmacist had a great laugh as she entered Rocky’s information into our family record of medicines. We are probably one of their best customers, if not the best given all the prescriptions my kids and I take. And now we have one more family member on their roles. If only my insurance prescription coverage extended to Rocky….

Rocky’s meds seem to be helping a bit. We took a couple of short trips over the weekend to see how he would handle the situation. He didn’t destroy another crate, although he did bark a lot when we left. But I was encouraged. Yesterday morning and this morning, I could almost read it in his eyes that he knew we were going for a longer time. Yesterday he barked a while, but then settled down, and he didn’t get out of his crate. This morning he barked a little longer, and I won’t know until this afternoon how he does with the whole day.

He’s such a good dog other than the separation anxiety and his strange obsession with Tickle Me Elmo, and I really hope we can work through this. If anyone has other ideas, I would love to hear them!

My Sorority Sisters

I didn’t belong to a sorority when I was in college, but I feel like I belong to one now.

I ran into one of my sorority sisters in the parking lot at Target yesterday. She, like I, was struggling to get a wheelchair out of the back of a vehicle. The slight smile on her face told me that it was just as difficult for her as it was for me.

Another sister and I connected at the restaurant where I was picking up dinner on Saturday night. Her son with Down Syndrome was very loudly telling everyone at the bar why they shouldn’t be drinking. His mom looked into my eyes, then noticed my daughter shredding all the napkins while waiting for our pickup, and a look of absolute understanding passed between us.

My sisters are everywhere – in the hair salon holding their daughters in death grips and hoping for a passable haircut – at the grocery store putting as many items back on the shelf as they take off the shelf – in the waiting room at our children’s hospital tube feeding their teenagers – and standing outside the women’s restroom trying to decide how they will help their almost-adult son with his toileting needs.

No matter what town I visit, my sisters and I recognize each other. We don’t have special handshakes or secret words or sappy songs we sing. We have our children and the unshakeable knowledge that we are not alone.

Can't We Do Better?

I attended a meeting this week at the day support facility for my oldest daughter, Jessica. Jessica is going to be 18 years old in just a couple of weeks, and after school and on school holidays she attends a program at one of our local facilities that specializes in day support for people with cognitive disabilities.

Jessica has been at this particular facility for six years, and prior to that, she spent 2 years at a similar program run by another disability-focused entity. If you do the math, you will see that she started in these programs when she was 10 years old, an age where most children of the same age are attending daycare facilities after school and during school holidays. However, because of Jessica’s aggressive tendencies, no traditional daycare facility would agree to accommodate her.

I’ve never cared for the day support programs, but as a working single parent, my options were limited. The first program Jessica attended was staffed by low-paid workers, most of whom had little to no experience in relating to people with cognitive disabilities. The facility itself was gloomy and dark, and the ‘clients’ (the name for the children who attended the program) would sit around doing little for most of the day. Homework help was nonexistent, and even though plans of care were developed for each child, they usually were not followed. The atmosphere was so depressing that I hated sending Jessica there each day. A depressing environment was definitely not what she needed.

After the first facility, Jessica moved to the only other program in our area, the one that she is currently attending. While the staff at the second program is slightly better trained, the feeling I get when walking in to the facility is not positive. The rooms are small and crowded, and the furnishings are old. The look is not what one would find in a mainstream daycare facility, but rather gives the impression that the people in charge think appearance will not matter to their ‘clients’.

Since all the ‘clients’ have significant cognitive issues, and many have significant behavior issues, I have to wonder how Jessica, and all the other children for that matter, will have positive behaviors and habits modeled. While observing during my meeting, I saw older teenaged clients being handed crayons for coloring. I saw those same clients throwing the crayons across the room. I saw Jessica trying to flirt with a boy about her same age, but her flirting led to inappropriate touching and language. The staff person merely pulled Jessica away from the boy. I saw a young man with Autism rocking back and forth and moaning. The staff person sat right next to him and did nothing. Then a young girl, probably about 13 or 14 years old, came running through the room, naked and touching herself. Many of the other clients laughed, and even one staff person laughed with them.

I have been searching for years for a program that will be a good match for Jessica, both now and in the future. So far, I have found nothing in my city. I realize that caring for and supporting children with significant challenges is not easy, but there has to be something better. Our service delivery systems are doing a rotten job, and I don’t know what to do to change it. Just today in the news, my state’s legislature announced it was going to look to cut social service programs to balance the budget. If that happens, the bad is going to get even worse, and our children and adults with cognitive disabilities will continue to have bleak futures.

Thankful Thursday

Today, I am thankful...

• for library Saturdays. Bringing home a pile of delicious books to read is almost as good as Christmas in my eyes


• for the little space heater I have in my bedroom. For some reason, the rest of my house can be toasty warm with the themostat set at 68 degrees, but my room is an icebox


• that Ashley seems to be feeling much better since getting antibiotics for her ear infections


• that Petco took back the dog crate that Rocky destroyed in his separation anxiety induced frenzy. They gave me a full refund and I applied it towards a plastic enclosed crate which we are trying for the first time today. Wonder what I will find when I get home today...?


• that I only have to work (at my paying job) two and a half days next week. I'm so looking forward to spending time at home with the kids and eating lots of good Thanksgiving food!


• that my sons have gotten up all the leaves in our yard. Now, if the wind would stop blowing my neighbor's leaves into our yard, the boys would be much happier.


• that Starbucks is once again selling their Caramel Apple Spice drink. It's my once a month treat - last year, it was a once a week treat, but with the economy, well...you know


• for the very special time I had last Sunday with Lynnette and Brooke at the Disney Playhouse Live show


• that I have gone an entire week now without having to take my car into the shop - knock on wood


• for earmuffs