I'm turning into an OT superhero! In my dreams at least

So, I dreamed last night that I was in some foreign country and there was this little OT hut in grave danger. Floodwaters were raging and getting higher by the second. Me and another OT grimly tried to grab as many of the items as we could, walking through waist-high water to safe ground. And again and again, as the water started to get to our necks and we carried OT materials on our head. We had to prioritze the items we thought would be most needed. It was hard work and scary too! We finally stopped (or ok, I woke up) when we started to get scared we'd get swept away in the waters.

WEIRD!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fieldwork: Scary, scary times

Well, I had a lot of plans for today, but since I have developed a bad sore throat, I think I'll mostly just be staying in and studying.

We just got information about potential fieldwork placements for our Level II's. It's kind of intimidating to think about 9 months of clinical rotations. Our program does three, three-month rotations. There is just so much unknown and it is scary. Some of it is financial worry and logistical location worry, and some of it is worry about supervisors, competency, etc. Plus I really want to find more about fieldwork placements in places like CA, but there doesn't appear to be any kind of fieldwork evaluation database where I could find out what other people have said about placements there. Too bad all schools couldn't figure out a way to at least submit names/places/e-mail addresses to some central database at AOTA, so you could e-mail previous students there. Oh well. Luckily we have a great fieldwork coordinator so I am sure it will all work out!

Do any of you seasoned therapists have advice to give on fieldwork placements or fieldwork in general?

Update, a few days later: I'm still sick, now with a bad cold, so I may be bad about updating for a few days!! Guess I better get into some HEALING occupations...(cackling).

Celia: The reason I am in OT school

Celia and I spin in circles, shrieking with glee. I eventually let go, overcome with dizziness. I have my arms out for balance as I hesitantly back up against a wall, the room
spinning. She studies me carefully, then grins and imitates me. She puts her arms out andwalks backwards to the wall so she is positioned like me. But she really isn't dizzy. Her
vestibular system is immature and she could spin all day. Once my dizziness subsides, I turn on her CD player and we begin to dance to one of her favorite singers, Garth Brooks.
We clap our hands and wiggle around and sing loudly. "Callin Baton Rouge...."

I was a volunteer play therapist that worked with Celia, from when she was five-eight
years old. Her father worked at my college, and he had sent an e-mail out to the psych
department asking for people willing to work long-term with Celia. They were hoping to
follow a child-centered play program based on the model "Son-Rise". I was intrigued as I
really wasn't sure what I wanted to do yet, but I love children and this sounded really
interesting. Her parents explained to me that Celia had been born with a life-threatening
heart defect, and spent her first days of life in the neonatal ICU. Her heart defect was
corrected, but there were other issues. She also had hip dysplasia and other problems due
to an unidentified genetic syndrome. Physically she was very small for her age, and
several of her fingers were slightly deformed. She also had hypotonia, dyspraxia, sensory
processing disorder, and cognitive, fine motor, and gross motor delays. They were hoping
to have several play therapists who would come weekly and "play" with her, with the intent
and focus on helping her develop more skills.

I read the binder on the Son-Rise program, and then also read the Out-of-Sync Child and
Greenspan's "The Child with Special Needs", which has a concept called Floor-Time that was
very helpful. These books helped give me a grasp on what I should be doing with Celia. And
we were off!

Celia was rather underresponsive to the environment and needed a lot of stimulation and
proprioceptive input. She needed a lot of spinning and jumping and dancing and large
moments to help calm her. Anything involving joint compression or firm pressure was also
good. With fine-motor skills, she just got bored or frustrated easily. Her combination of
finger deformities and hypotonia made it extra hard on her. Eventually, I found a magnetic
tin paper doll set that she loved, and she finally started being willing to work with
that.

Her speech was poor and most people could not understand it unless they knew her well. She
didn't fully close her mouth when speaking due to her low tone and she drooled frequently.
She could not do things like stick her tongue out on command, due to her apraxia.

The thing I loved most about Celia was her infinite joy. She would shriek with glee and run around in circles when she saw me, and she would laugh hysterically at even the silliest joke. That's not to say she didn't have her moments, but in general, she was energetic and happy and sweet. I truly loved her (I still do, it's too bad her family moved away last year).

We worked on things like identifying emotions, the concept of pretend, answering "Why" questions, grading our movements and voices, and more. Every week the sessions were a combination of untrained PT, OT, and speech in one! It was wonderful getting to do whatever we felt like, not having to worry about insurance justifications or IEP goals. Of course, I wished I had more training though.

I had never heard of OT until I started working with her, since she had an OT and I was reading a lot of books that mentioned OT. I had previously wanted to be either a psychologist or efficiency expert. I knew I needed to work with people, that I enjoyed helping people, and it had to be one-on-one, but there were flaws in both psychology and efficiency that made me hesitate to choose it as a career. Through Celia, I discovered OT was a combination of all my strengths.

From there, I did an internship through my college at a pediatric cancer hospital in their rehab department, where I was exposed to OT, PT, and speech. It was a great experience.

Since I choose this path rather late in my college career, I ended up taking a year of prerequisites after I graduated, in order to fulfill the requirements to get into OT school.

So I had 5 years of undergrad instead of the 3 needed to get in, and I'm a little bit older than most of the students in my class, but I feel that's an advantage in some respects, since it means I have more experience.

I love OT school! And I am passionate about the work OT does. The End.

PS: Thanks Patti, for your pre-emptive OT story!
PS2: Celia's name/picture was used with permission by her mother

I can has OT?

If you don't know what a lolcat is, you live in the dark ages. Here is my first OT lolcat. :)

Anything can happen, anything can be.

This weekend, I'll try to update with a post on how I ended up in OT school (hint: I'd love to know how all y'all ended up on the OT path as well). For now, I need to go read a few articles for Evidence-Based Practice and look at some Biomechanics!

So I leave you with a quick quote.

"Listen to the Musn't's child, Listen to the Don't's. Listen to the Shouldn't's, the Impossibles, the Won't's. Listen to the Never Haves, then Listen close to me. ANYthing can happen, child, ANYthing can Be." -Shel Silverstein

I will be changed.

Things are happening. Daily.
I come across new disturbances
in my routine. I am curiously
unsettled. I dress myself
and the clothes fall to the floor.
I scratch my head. Dust
in my hand. All morning
arranging flowers, and for what?
Petals fallen, litter
on the pretty cloth. I march
straightway to the mirror
and shake my fist. My hand
is a blue maraca scattering petals.
I shout my rage
and hear my words praising
the vast goodness of the world.
This is beyond control.

Even so, I am slowly learning one thing:
of one thing I am slowly becoming
aware: whether or not I would
have it so, whether I sleep
or no, I will be changed.
I am changing as I speak. Bless you all.
Suffer the children. Finished. Keep.
--Scott Cairns

I'm gonna be a weird OT

I am sitting here procrastinating as I have a final tomorrow and can't bring myself to study anymore. It's in Conceptual Foundations on things like ethics, licensure, documentation...SOAP NOTES!

Anyway, I was scrolling through my old, non-OT and very unprofessional blog just refreshing my memory on some of the weird things I've blogged about. I came across a post from this fall when I dried pretty colored leaves and then taped them to my wall just for fun, another post where I talked about velcroing chapsticks all over my house so I never have to hunt for them, and a post from where I tried to make my mom a t-shirt with an iron-picture-transfer of 3.14 platypuses (Platypi, get it?) - but only ended up ruining an iron.

I'm gonna be a weird OT.

Ora Ruggles: Queen of Struggles

I've heard about Ora Ruggles for several months now, in introductory OT textbooks. I was instantly intrigued by the fascinating stories I read about her. She was one of the first reconstruction aides after WW1, and was a pioneer in OT. Her biography was written by John Carlova and is called The Healing Heart. That's based on her famous line, about how you must reach for the heart, as well as the hands, for it is the heart that does the healing.

I've tried to get my hands on this book, but apparently it is out of print and it costs about $60. I was thrilled to discover my local major library had it. I read the book in a single day because it was so great. In fact, the 2005 Slagle lecturer, Suzanne Peloquin, wrote an article on how Ora Ruggles exemplified the trait of empathy (as mostly evidenced by this biography), which is a trait all OTs should strive for.

It turns out Ora was a tomboy who had a rough life. Her father died of sugar diabetes, her mother had a stroke that left her hemiplegic for a long time. One of her sisters was deaf from whooping cough. Ora ended up becoming an incredible reconstruction aide working in various asylums and institutions in different parts of the US. She basically helped shape OT into what it is today. She even knew Eleanor Clarke Slagle personally, and apparently they butted heads a lot! She had a strong artistic knack as well as ingenuity, imagination, and compassion. And of course, intelligence!

Two stories in the book that made me laugh:

1) She and a bunch of other reconstruction aides, who were all young single females, ended up dating soldiers they were working with. One time, she and several other aides went out with their boyfriends to meet their parents, and one of the moms fainted, because every single one of those soldier boyfriends was missing at least one limb!

2) She talked about teaching men how to "rake knit", a more masculine form of knitting. The aides gave them bright red yarn for its attention-getting properties. These men would knit and knit and knit to stay occupied, making very long scarves. They'd be proud of them and send them to their wives and girlfriends and mothers, so in 1919, in many cities across America, you'd see women wearing long red scarves that were often dragging on the ground, because these soldiers had made them in OT.

--------------
So I totally recommend this book, and wish it would STOP being out of print because I think it should be required reading in every OT school across the nation!

One of my long-term goals is to eventually own this book. :)

What books do you all recommend to all future OTs??????

Shaken Baby Syndrome

Suburban Turmoil (http://www.suburbanturmoil.blogspot.com/) is a Nashville mom with a newborn. In a post titled "Crybaby" (May 10th), she wrote about her son's reflux and how hard it has been dealing with it, and then posted a link to a recent article about a woman who killed one of her newborn triplets by putting him down violently in a moment of frustration because he wouldn't stop crying. You could listen to the 911 call on that article page, and it was chilling. What Suburban Turmoil discussed in her post, and what many commenters said in their responses, is how easily it could have just been any mom making that call. She talked about how those first few months can be very frustrating and exhausting and emotional, especially when you have a baby screaming constantly. Many of the moms who responded did share that there had been times they just wanted to shake or scream at their baby to get him or her to shut up so they could get some sleep. I thought it was very interesting to read mothers sharing such intimate details about their experiences. The article and 911 call can be found here:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/story/3961774p-4574643c.html

The reason I write about this is because of observation experiences I've had as well as blog entries I've read elsewhere (like at neonataldoc.blogspot.com). Basically, a lot of teenagers have babies. And these babies are frequently born premature due to the risk factors associated with lower socioeconomic status, maternal age, STDs, you name it. Premature babies are at risk for so many problems and are frequently very fussy and often inconsolable. It can be hard for any mother to not get frustrated and emotional when dealing with a crying baby. Now think of a teenage mother with poor social skills and a typical adolescent low frustration tolerance, and think of her trying to deal with her fussy baby who just won't stop crying. This poor mom is dealing with resentment and inexperience and frustration and anger. I can just imagine how easy it would be to give that baby a little shake or two.

As occupational therapists, if we are working in a neonatal ICU or similar area, I think it's really important to remember to address problems of frustration with the caregiver. During one of my observations, I remember watching a teenage mother dressing her young baby and getting ready to finally take the baby home. She seemed, at least to my inexperienced eyes, just the slightest bit hostile and agressive in the way she was moving the baby. I saw a huge potential in her to get tired of the baby crying and just try to shut it up in a reckless manner. It scared me a little bit. I was observing a great OT at the time and I was really impressed with how she handled that mother. She explained that babies with a lot of problems might cry a lot, and sometimes it would seem like nothing would make them stop. She advised the mom, in those cases when she was getting really really frustrated, to make sure everything was okay (hunger, diaper change, etc) and that the baby was safe, and then if the baby still wouldn't stop crying, just walk away for a few minutes and calm down. I thought that was really good advice.

I know I'm only an OT student with VERY limited experience, so I don't mean to sound like I am preaching. I'm just sharing what was going through my head today about my future role as an OT as it related to Shaken Baby Syndrome, based on that newspaper article I read and Suburban Turmoil's column!

Have any of you experienced issues with this in your practice?

Have a great weekend! I'm going to try and figure out how to add OT blog links to the sidebar of my blog this weekend, using my very nonexistant html skills. I've been thrilled by what I perceive as a recent upsurge in OT-related blogs.

Ding dong, the week is dead...

This has been the worst week of OT school so far, in terms of academic workload. Or maybe I have anatomy amnesia and don't remember how stressed I was during that class. This at least SEEMS like the worst it's been. Anyway, several nights this week have been such that I could only get in 4-5 hours of sleep, but I function best at 8 hours so I've been awfully tired! I was working on a bunch of stuff that was due, but neurobiology was hovering over my head. Normally, I'm the type of student that sits in the front row, pays attention, takes copious notes, and studies. For whatever reason, I wasn't that way in neurobiology, and goofed off alot. I knew as I went to each class that I had no idea what was going on and didn't understand, but for some reason decided that was okay and that I didn't need to study. Until this week. Because it was time for our neuro final, worth 50% of our grade. And I started to freak out, because I had so many other things going on. So I studied a little bit Tuesday and Wednesday, when I found time. Thursday, several girls came over around 1pm to study for neuro, and it ended up turning into a 12 hour affair. They left around 1am. While we did go off on tangents and take a dinner break, it was essentially 12 hours of marathon neuro studying. It was actually kinda fun. The material really ended up making more sense. Of course by the end of it as it was getting really late we started getting giddy and everything seemed funny. LATERAL GENICULATE NUCLEUS! HA HA HA!!! Hmm. Anyway, I think we all ended up doing a good job on the final and I am reasonably confident I got an A in the course, so I am thrilled. I wish I had been a better student in his class though. The problem with cramming is that you learn it for the test and then forget it. So on the one hand, it's unlikely I'll ever need to know detailed information in the clinic about "the magnocellular neurosecretory system". On the other hand, if someone comes in with a cut or compressed peripheral nerve, it would be nice to have remembered some of my neuro off the top of my head so I can spend less time looking up symptoms.

Anyway...the week is over. WOO! One more month until summer break!

Update: I did get an A in the course, and the professor was a very nice, knowledgeable man. It was just that our learning styles didn't mesh.

Any of you have a grad school horror story you want to share?

Your weekends are taken over too...

Today is Sunday. I met a girl from my class at 11am at a cafe to work on splinting. We made six patterns in two hours (we're not so great at it). In the meantime I downed 2 venti iced coffees. I normally don't drink caffeine, so I was essentially vibrating the rest of the day. I went home and studied. Then I picked another student up at the dorm at 3pm and brought her to my house so we could work on our presentation/paper for a Slagle lecturer. Then another student decided to come over so we could work on studying for our Evidence-Based Practice test. We spent a few hours studying, then we went to a Japanese restaurant and then got kid scoops of ice-cream at Baskin-Robbins. Then we stopped at a scary ATM. I stayed in the car ready as the getaway, one girl made her deposit, and the other girl did the "Mission Impossible" thing and stood guard. Then we came back to my house and we studied some more. Finally we wrapped things up around midnight. It was a ton of fun!!! I loved it!! (I reread this and it sounded sarcastic, but I am serious. It was tons of fun - not the studying but the social part of it.)

This upcoming week we have an Evidence-Based Practice test, a Slagle presentation/paper, Splinting, our final neurobiology exam, and a take-home Perspectives of Early Development test due. We originally also had a Conceptual Foundations test and a Biomechanics test as well but we managed to get that spread out a tiny bit. It's still going to be a crazy week. We also have a student meeting and all our normal classes of course. I'll be so happy when this week is over, even though we still have almost a month to go.

Ok, it's almost 12:40, I am going to bed!

Look Me In the Eye - a blog by a man with Asperger's.

While I was looking at Michelle O'Neil's blog, I found a post where she discussed a new blog called "Look Me in the Eye", http://jerobison.blogspot.com/

The author has Asperger's and is quite articulate. Below is a sample of part of one of his posts.

Allow me to share some thoughts from my own Aspergian childhood experience. I don’t purport to speak for all autistic people, only for myself. But my thoughts may still be worth considering the next time you observe a “living dead” autistic person:

I am not “alive but dead.” I am fully aware of what’s going on around me, in fact, I am more aware of some things that ordinary people. I’m very quick to pick up very subtle things. As a misfit, I am well aware that I must always be on my toes – a jump ahead of the others. I just don’t always display visible reactions to things I see I see, smell, or hear.

The idea that “the body is there but the senses are gone” is just wrong. I have always been in full possession of my senses. As a child, my senses of hearing, smell, and taste were considerably sharper than those of my parents and most others around me. And my eyesight was at least average.

Some kids are natural OTs

http://michelleoneilwrites.blogspot.com/2006/12/occupational-therapy.html

The post below was written by Michelle O'Neil and I copied it from the above URL.

Occupational Therapy

I fell in love with Riley's occupational therapist the second I laid eyes on him. First of all, he's gorgeous. Blond hair. Hazel eyes.

But it's the way he motivates her that charms me. She'll do things for him she would never do for me. The day he convinced her to climb the steps to a big metal slide was astounding. As I watched her go down I stood there wondering, How'd he do that?

Part of it is the fact that he makes therapy fun. She laughs as he works on her proprioception, rolling her across a trampoline like a log, giving her input as to where her body is in space.

He works on increasing her grip strength by holding toys in his hands and getting her to pull them away from him.

He challenges her depth perception by taking her outside and encouraging her to walk down a big grassy hill sideways. She follows everything he does.

Today he used a hula-hoop. Together they got in the middle of it, and then he turned away from her and started to walk. The hoop was around her back and she had to follow him as he increased and decreased his speed. This was great fun and also helped her work on balance and movement.

After that, he told her to turn around and they both walked in place, in opposite directions, hoop to stomachs. They had to kind of balance there in space in order to not topple over. Riley laughed the whole time. Later, there was more grip work as she held the hoop and he tried repeatedly to pull it from her.

Our insurance company refuses to cover Riley's occupational therapy, but luckily this guy is cheap. True, he sometimes shows up wearing nothing but his Wiggles underpants, but for all he does for her, we let that slide.

His name is Seth O'Neil and he's worth every dime we're paying him.


=======================
End of post.

So clearly, Michelle was talking about her young son in this post.
I wanted to share this because it's a reminder that it's not just the OT that can work on these things...siblings can often times get better results than the OT, so remember they can be great helpers in a session and not just hindrances!

Yay for AOTA!

AOTA Pride!

Another OT student blog I just found

http://www.aishel.net/

Here is a blog entry HE!! wrote in March:

Identifying Yourself

It is important to always properly identify to your patients who you are, what your role is in the therapeutic process, and what you plan on doing during that treatment session. Sometimes, however, that just isn't enough.

I am taking a graduate elective that allows me to have 60 hours of extra clinical time so that I can further gain experience in the setting of my choosing before graduating. I have liked acute care for a while now, and I therefore decided to do another clinical in acute care.

My last day was earlier this week. We went in to see an 80+ year old lady who had been admitted for CHF and also had a diagnosis of dementia. While the patient agreed to let me treat her by walking from her bed to the bathroom to do a toilet transfer, she kept asking me over and over again why I was doing this "procedure." I explained each time that the doctors wanted to know how safe she was so that she could go home. However, no matter how many times I explained it, she kept asking me about the procedure. Before leaving, she asked that we come back so that we could speak to her daughters.

A few hours later, we went back to her room as requested, and her daughters were now there. Turns out that since I wasn't wearing a formal identification from the hospital (because I was only there for 60 hours), she thought I was someone from some random nursing home. She was afraid that I was assessing her for a nursing home. No matter how many times I told her that we were occupational therapists, she was still worried.

So even if you identify yourself as an occupational therapist, that isn't always enough. I think it was great that the patient was cognizant of the fact that all hospital employees should have identification, and that she realized that I wasn't wearing a hospital ID.

OTs Helping in a Private Residence

I am copy/pasting a blog post written by "Dream Mom", who has a son with severe special needs. I highly recommend you read her blog regularly and pay her a visit. This post was particularly applicable to this blog because it talks about the problem with Hoyer lift maneuverability in her residence and how a PT/OT helped her with it!

http://dreammom.blogspot.com is her site, and this post is from http://dreammom.blogspot.com/2007/03/red-rover-red-rover-let-my-friends-come.html

Red Rover, Red Rover, Let My Friends Come Over

Dear Son was getting ready for school, when I told him about our company. His physical and occupational therapists would be coming by after school, to assist me in working with his Hoyer Lift, as I had been having trouble in my attempts to use it. His Occupational Therapist had contacted me two weeks ago, to answer some questions for me about a therapy form and had offered their services. Dear Son was quite excited, that someone he knew, was visiting our home. He smiled when I told him they would be coming over after school and I knew he was excited.

I got him off the bus and the Physical Therapist was just arriving. Dear Son smiled at her and got really excited as she followed us inside. The Occupational Therapist arrived minutes later. Once inside, I showed them his normal after school routine as I placed him in his rocker. He was so excited to "show off" and rocked for them as well as demonstrated the transition to the rocker. I explained to them I supported him for the transition into the rocker and how he communicated to me that he was done. I said that I have to sit right by him because once he's tired, he can just slide right out of the chair in a second and crash to the ground. When he gets tired, he gives me a "flick" of the hip. That's where he takes his hip and moves it slightly, as if to say he's done. You have to "get it" and then remove him promptly otherwise, it's not safe. I explained the hip "flick" as I call it and Dear Son did it right on cue. The Physical Therapist commented on Dear Son's receptive language and how he understands so much of what goes on. We then showed them Dear Son's room, and the space challenges of using the Hoyer Lift to get him out of bed and into the wheelchair. (It was determined the mesh piece to lift him was too small and unsafe to use so we need to order a different one that provides more support.) Dear Son was just so proud. You could see he was happy to have someone over and happy to show them his home.

One of the issues for him, and I am sure other children like him, are friends. It's not that Dear Son doesn't make friends easily, because he does. He's the type of kid in the class that they would probably vote as "most popular" among both the kids and the staff, if that were possible. He has an easy going smile, a good laugh that makes everyone laugh, a handsome face and is the first one to get everyone on their way to a good time. The real issue is doing things with friends, and having friends come over to the house.

Many of Dear Son's friends and classmates, are in wheelchairs and many don't speak. Even for those that do, they have other issues that warrant inclusion in his particular classroom. His classroom, is typically one that has exclusively special needs students, as their needs are typically best met in this type of classroom as opposed to be included in a regular classroom (Certainly this is a big issue and there are pros and cons regarding inclusion; I won't expand on that here but in Dear Son's case, this has worked best.) The problem comes in that more often than not, they don't have their friends come over. There are many reasons for this, most boil down to the fact that it's just plain too hard. It's hard to get them from place to place, they have special needs that make it difficult (maybe they have meds or g tubes that require feeding at certain times, etc.) and that's if someone is available to take them there and back. It's compounded by the fact that if you don't know a child, it can be hard to watch two of them. Heck it's a lot of work just taking care of him. It's also challenging because many of these children, have different communication methods, especially if they are nonverbal. You have to learn how each child communicates his needs-eye gaze, equipment and body language to name a few. As a result of all of these issues, more often than not, their friends just don't come over, making school their number one place for social interaction.

Taking them on an outing is a lot of work as well. It's not easy going to a restaurant, some can't eat, some are g tube fed, some can't handle the noise in there, etc. Or they have other issues, like the one child who is autistic I believe, and goes to the grocery store with the classroom and wants a "particular" apple, like the one someone else is purchasing that is already in "their" cart, and no other apple will do. It's a whole different world than one most of us are accustomed to. It's also hard handling one child, let alone more than one, unless their parent goes along.

The bottom line is that Dear Son doesn't have friends over and because he can't speak, he doesn't get to talk to his classmates on the phone, or instant message or via e-mail. We take for granted our social interactions and they are a big part of our lives. Heck, we don't even consider them as blessings, because we take them for granted. But for these children, they have nothing. If they don't have siblings, their lives can be quite boring at times. I always think that is why they enjoy disaster so much or when things go wrong. At least it's exciting.

I also have to wonder how they comfort themselves when they feel fear or when new things happen at school that make the phones ring off the hook for regular kids. How do they handle these things? Certainly Dear Son thinks about things. I know that because when I talk to him about things he is worried about, he gives me a kiss on the hand when I hit the nail on the head.

And what about prayer? The Wheelie Catholic, one of my favorite bloggers, had a post recently about how her disability affected her spirituality. I commented on how I wondered what Dear Son did when he was afraid. For many of us, we pray. What do they do? How do we teach them about prayer and comfort in times of need? Certainly I pray with Dear Son but I don't know that Dear Son knows his prayers.

There are so many issues at times in caring for the disabled that we forget about the "normal" things, the things that are important in our lives, the things that bring pleasure to us. And as they grow, and the physical challenges of managing him get exponentially harder, it becomes an even larger challenge.

And therein lies the power of Barney. I wrote a post a long time ago titled, "A Letter to Bill Gates" about the power of the Acti-Mates Barney and how it became Dear Son's best friend and is a friend to many Special Needs children. Even at fifteen, he still talks to Barney, just not as much. I am reminded of this every time I take him to the Pediatric Neurology Clinic at Big Academic Medical Center. There is a picture in the examining room of the Velveteen Rabbit. Under the picture is the phrase, "When someone loves you long enough, you become real." I often think of Dear Son and Barney when I read that as I am waiting for the doctor to come in the room. Maybe someday, we can do a better job of providing for disabled children, first by having daycare to allow parents to work and daycare for the social interaction, and then resolving other challenges to the disabled, that we can focus on ways we can make their lives truly better, not just in terms of functionally better, but enriching their lives. Enriching their lives by making it easier for them to do the things that we do, going out with our friends or having them over and having a good time. Maybe that's why they are called Special Needs children; they just don't get what we take for granted.
========
The blog entry above was written by Dream Mom. Check out her blog at http://dreammom.blogspot.com, which is where I found this post.

Disability Do's and Dont's

I stumbled across a blog today where the author had posted some great wheelchair do's and don'ts...

http://disabilityrants.blogspot.com/2007/03/disability-dos-and-donts.html#links

Don't:

1. Ask us what's wrong with us.
2. Ask us what happened to us.
3. Ask us how we do what we do.
4. Tell us we're awesome for doing the ordinary.
5. Think we're awesome for doing the ordinary.
6. Assume anything.
7. EVER try to freakin' push us before asking if we need help.
8. EVER try to freakin' push us after asking if we need help and we say no.
9. Swear at us when we get pissed off when you don't respect our answer, decision, space (pushing us without asking is as invasive as me going up to you and taking your briefcase out of your hand without asking when you don't know me from Bob).
9. Rush ahead to open doors for us.
10. Apologize for not having helped us in time when it seems we're doing just fine without you.
11. Say stupid things like "I should be doing that for you" when we reach the door first and hold it open for you.
12. EVER pat us on the freakin' head!
13. Ask us what disability we have before getting to know us.
14. Ask us anything disability related before getting to know us "just because you're curious". Who the hell are you, and how important do you think your curiousity is, freak?
15. Ask us if we play basketball.
16. Try to give us money (unless it's a cheque with 6 digits).
17. Tell us how freakin' brave we are unless we just fought a bear.
18. Address our companions when asking questions meant for us.
19. Ask "are you sure?" when we tell you we don't need help.
20. Ask "do you want to go out" if we happen to be sitting by a door.
21. Assume we like to listen to your problems coz we'll "understand" since obviously our lives have been hard like yours, right?
22. Assume that a physical, visual, auditory disability, speech impediment, or other means we couldn't possibly hold a Masters degree, good paying job, own a condo, drive a car, marry, have children, make decisions for ourselves.
23. Shout at us.

Do:

1. Use your freakin' common sense.
2. Talk to us.
3. Get to know us.
4. Listen.
5. Establish some sort of relationship before you ask us anything personal.
6. Allow us to be as independent as we can be.
7. Wait for us to ask for help.
9. Let us open the door for you if we reach it first.
10. Give us a chance before you come barging in to "rescue us".
11. Think twice before you open your mouth.
12. Ask us out for coffee.
13. See us as human beings.
14. See us as women or men.
15. Consider us as wives, husbands, partners, friends, lovers, intellectual equals
16. Relax.
17. Laugh.
18. Be open.
19. Remember that we have to deal with people like you every hour of every day.