Tag: Sotos Syndrome and ODD

  • A Response To Raising Special Kids’ Position on Waiver Proposal 1115: An Open Letter to RSK And The Arizona AHCCCS Administration

    Yesterday afternoon, I read the public response from Raising Special Kids about AHCCCS 1115, the proposed CMS waiver that seeks to extend some provisions allowing parents to provide attendant care to their children, while discontinuing others, namely allowing parents to become the paid habilitative therapy providers. I feel it is important for me to share…

  • When Community Safety Makes My Heart Sing…

    For a few months now most of Tony’s community safety walks have been handled entirely by me acting as his habilitative therapist. Using differential reinforcement and a parental enforced consequence for pushing (the non clocked in parent would tell Tony that any pushing would result in him loosing kindle privileges for 2 minutes when we…

  • I’ll Take Risk Assessment Over “Singing in the Rain” Any Day…

    I have always loved being out in the rain. I remember as a little girl, riding in the back of my grandfather’s uncovered truck bed as the drops splatted into and around me, M&M’s clutched in my hand, their colors bleeding out and melting, the clouds seemingly reaching down like fingers to wrap around my…

  • Celebrating 2 Years of Telehealth Speech Therapy Being More Successful Than The In Person Sessions 🙂

    Tony has always, always hated speech therapy. For many years this was his least favorite therapy type, as every speech therapist who has ever worked with him can attest. Our little man understands a great deal more than most people realize (in both English and Spanish), but he still usually doesn’t want to communicate unless…

  • “What The Heart Wants…”

    To be the mother of a child with profound disabilities is in many cases to wobble precariously along a thin ledge comprised of a great many sacrifices while trying not to completely loose yourself, yet feeling as if some days are still spent in free fall, searching for the person you could have been or…

  • Community Safety Progress Presents

    Hannah and I put up the outside Christmas lights by ourselves this year, and so Tony needed to accompany us up front. Historically, any sort of outside task required multiple (you should read that as every couple of minutes at least) sprints chasing Tony down as he laughingly ran out of our yard. But when…

  • Our Current In-Home ABA Programs: A Brief Overview

    Currently, our ABA programs are focused on skills that are being both practiced inside and outside of the home. This week, I am going to give a brief overview of the in-home therapy programs. Although everything we are working on matters, the bulk of our time is spent working on skills necessary for Tony to…

  • The Nightmare of “No”

    “He’s growing so tall! He’s doing so well! He’s being so patient!” We were finishing up a quick trip into a local grocery store this morning with a new ABA behavioral therapist that is working with Tony in the mornings, and those were the cashier’s comments to us. As I have explained before to those…

  • Using ABA To Calm Some Chaos

    Anyone working with our son quickly finds out that he wants everything to go exactly the way he wants it to go 100% of the time…and that he is very determined about trying to arrange things to get exactly that. There are many reasons of course why that cannot be encouraged, ranging from the fact…

  • Making Up With Chaos

    Truth is, I planned on writing about a different topic this week. But at this point, I’ve tried to drown my frazzled in about half a cup of Cherry Garcia and not quite managed to fully find, rescue, or resuscitate my tranquil…so I figured this was as good a week as any. Even when I…