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“There will always be someone worse off and better off than you. Always.”I hear this repeated whenever we take our daughter with cerebral palsy to medical appointments, and we see children who are bald after grueling rounds of chemotherapy or families dealing with children’s emotional and behavioral issues.I count my blessings and say to myself, “Self, you are lucky.” I look at my daughter happily tooling around in her wheelchair the color and sheen of nail polish while I fight the urge to run from the repetitive questions and forms in triplicate to skedaddle in the direction of the nearest Krispy Kreme.There are times I forget how the world sees my daughter: a cute girl who walks with a strange gait, who most often is drooling and who uses a communication device to speak. I forget that she resembles a broken marionette that has snipped her strings and says so much with a smile. What I see is a strong, capable, intelligent, goofy and amazing child who lightens hearts and communities that are blessed to know her.

“Nobody Is Too ‘Anything’ to Read, Write or Communicate” The late news broadcaster Walter Cronkite catalogued the ills of the world every night for television viewers. But through the cataract of daily despair he always glimpsed a reason to hope, to be joyful about the possibilities of the moment and beyond. For the tens of millions of viewers who watched his coverage of the first lunar landing 40 years ago that enthusiasm reached out from their TV sets, when, at the moment of human touchdown on the surface of the moon, Cronkite shed his cloak of objectivity and exuberantly exclaimed, “Oh, boy!”

Despite the many daily challenges that confront them in their sphere, members of school district assistive technology teams nationwide share Cronkite’s enthusiasm for the vast potential of technology to change the lives of individuals with disabilities. Sure, the struggles AT team members face are daunting: lack of time and money; too many pre-service and in-service teachers without sufficient AT training; funding-strapped districts that are sometimes reluctant to approve teams’ AT recommendations for individual students; the reluctance of some districts to accept AT’s viability, and a continuing belief in a few education quarters that some children with disabilities may never learn to read and write. Fortunately, among district AT team members – speech-language pathologists (SLP’s), occupational therapists (OT’s) and others – the technology flame burns brighter than ever. Their enthusiasm still bubbles. Their thirst for information about the latest technology developments that may aid their district’s children is unquenched. And their conviction that no child is too disabled to read or write remains not only ironclad but often translates into a hard-won happy reality for the children with whom they work.

More than one in 10 children age 9 to 17 years old -- girls more often than boys -- experience some sort of mood disorder, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And about half of them are receiving no therapy or treatment, reported a study in Pediatrics conducted by researchers from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health.

A federal appeals court decision this week may open the door for families to seek damages in cases where a child’s need for special services is ignored. The decision came in a lawsuit alleging that Hawaii schools deliberately neglected the needs of two girls with autism during their formative years.

August 2010 - Developing Family Stories: Moving the Backstory to the Forefront The child laughs easily. She can paint with brilliant colors. He can recite the statistics for every baseball team in every league for the past decade. She wants to help. He wants to make friends. But those aren’t the things that friends and relatives and teachers seem to notice. Instead, they focus on the delays, the sometimes inappropriate behavior, the extra work needed to deal with Jennifer or Jason’s disabilities, their differences. Pretty soon, Jennifer and Jason are seen as their disabilities. The labels assigned in order to qualify for services become their identity.

President Barack Obama publicly honored Rosa Marcellino at the White House Friday, days after signing a bill carrying her name which will strip the term “mental retardation” from some areas of federal law.

TRENTON - Not everyone gets a state senator to write their excuse for missing school. But Sen. Jeff Van Drew, D-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, was happy to accommodate Samantha Ravelli, of Ocean City, and her sister, Roseann, on Thursday when the two missed school to attend a Senate session during which Van Drew's bill to form a statewide Reading Disabilities Task Force was unanimously approved.

“Vive la difference!” is proving to be the appropriate motto for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and other professionals providing augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) support to children of culturally diverse families.

The proposal would expand on a set of pilot youth crisis diversion programs around the state. In the last year, four programs -- serving Helena, Missoula, Yellowstone County and Eastern Montana, have been having some "good results," said Jani McCall of the Yellowstone Youth Crisis Network, who works with the Yellowstone Boys and Girls Ranch.

The panel unanimously endorsed the draft legislation, setting it up for discussion in the 2015 Legislature.

It's been painful to read the long and varied list of what people believe causes autism. In the beginning, I would investigate every possible lead like it mattered. Soon, I would learn to pick and choose ideas from the mass of information that seemed plausible, or even remotely possible. More recently, I have decided that it doesn't matter at all. It hurts more than it helps and knowing what may or may not cause autism won't change a thing about our perfect girl. There are some who would prey on our fear in order to profit from touting false cures. Some may truly believe what they are selling and some are the worst kind of predator. And some cause harm by jumping on one of these bandwagons to spread ideas that hurt our cause. I would like to address some of the more harmful propaganda surrounding causes of autism. When people posit or perpetuate some of the following ideas, it hurts our community irreparably.