Group items tagged

What:A group of moms of children with special needs of all types that meets monthly in Great Falls to share friendship, support, encouragement and ideas in dealing with their special needs families. Next event for Montana Special Moms-Great Falls group is on Friday, January 7, 2011 at 6pm. We’ll meet at Mac Kenzie River Pizza, 500 River Drive S in Great Falls, Montana. Group is open to Moms of kids with any type of disability or delay. Contact Jana at 406-727-2704 or jnjloo@yahoo.com for more information and to reserve your seat!

Just six treatment sessions designed to help moms of kids with developmental disabilities manage their stress can go a long way toward reducing depression and anxiety, researchers say. Parents of children with developmental disabilities often experience greater stress than moms and dads of typically-developing kids. Nonetheless, most interventions target the needs of their children with disabilities exclusively. Now, researchers say more attention ought to be paid to the unique needs of these parents. In a trial of two treatment programs, Elisabeth Dykens of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development and her colleagues found that weekly sessions with trained peer mentors could help moms conquer their stress and, in turn, interact more constructively with their children with disabilities.

What: The Rockin' Moms in Missoula is a group of moms who have children with all sorts of disabilties. We meet approximately monthly. It is a potluck at a member's home with $10 chair massages for everyone. Next Event: Wednesday, April 27th, at 7 p.m Where: To be Determined (Contact for more information) Contact: Interested moms can look for the yahoo group "Rockinmomsupport" or can email me at lisa.wilson@pluk.org or Jen Edgell at jedgell@bresnan.net

A group of moms of children with special needs of all types that meets monthly in Great Falls to share friendship, support, encouragement and ideas in dealing with their special needs families. For more information, to receive our emails or find out about the next gathering, please contact Jana at 727-2704.

What:A group of moms of children with special needs of all types that meets monthly in Great Falls to share friendship, support, encouragement and ideas in dealing with their special needs families. Next Event: Friday, February 4 at 6 p.m Where: First Southern Baptist. 2925 9th Ave S. (We can use the alley door and we will be downstairs.) Bring along a snack and drink of some sort, if you have time to throw something together. There will be coffee provided. Contact: Jana at 406-727-2704 or jnjloo@yahoo.com for more information and to reserve your seat!

What:A group of moms of children with special needs of all types that meets monthly in Great Falls to share friendship, support, encouragement and ideas in dealing with their special needs families. Next Event: Friday, April 8th at 6 p.m Where: First Southern Baptist. 2925 9th Ave S. (We can use the alley door and we will be downstairs.) Bring along a snack and drink of some sort, if you have time to throw something together. There will be coffee provided. Contact: Jana at 406-727-2704 or jnjloo@yahoo.com for more information and to reserve your seat!

What:A group of moms of children with special needs of all types that meets monthly in Great Falls to share friendship, support, encouragement and ideas in dealing with their special needs families. Next Event: Friday, May 6th at 6 p.m Where: First Southern Baptist. 2925 9th Ave S. (We can use the alley door and we will be downstairs.) Bring along a snack and drink of some sort, if you have time to throw something together. There will be coffee provided. Contact: Jana at 406-727-2704 or jnjloo@yahoo.com for more information and to reserve your seat!

Zach Sayne was 25 when he died earlier this month at the place that had been his home for 15 years — a children's nursing home in Alabama. But that was too far away, 200 miles too far, for his mother in Georgia. Nola Sayne was trying to bring him back, closer to her home. The story of why she couldn't reveals the bureaucratic traps, underfunding and lack of choices that plague state Medicaid programs.

Click here for more information on this webinar! (PDF)Register for the webinar here!What:Continuing with the Strategies for Success Webinar Series, parents Jennifer Bertram (Meghan's mom) and Elizabeth Aquino (Sophie's mom) share their stories of how communication programs and technology such as the iPhone and iPad have helped them communicate with their non-verbal children. Our featured speaker, Cindy Cottier, a renowned speech-language pathologist and communications specialist, provides and in depth view of various communication tools and explains how the iPad is used as a communication tool for children and youth with epilepsy and other developmentally disabilities.• Hear Jennifer's amazing story of Meghan using her iPhone• Listen with delight as Elizabeth shares how the iPad has bonded their family closer together• Learn from Cindy the benefits of the iPad along with applications for varied levels of communication• Explore other tools, techniques and apps (free and low cost) that parents can useWhen:February 14, 201212:00 pm - 1:00 pm MSTContact:Valerie Hill Phone: 301-918-3728.Email: parentinfo@efa.org

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once described England and America as two countries separated by a common language. Now research from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center suggests that common language may also be the divide standing between mothers of critically ill newborns and the clinicians who care for them.

A heartwarming message from 15 people with Down syndrome to a future mom.

Everyone knows a mom wears a variety of “hats.”We function as nurses, counselors, taxi drivers, coaches, and we have other responsibilities. Since my fourth child was diagnosed with a neurological disorder, my number of “hats” has increased.

Everyone knows a mom wears a variety of “hats.”We function as nurses, counselors, taxi drivers, coaches, and we have other responsibilities. Since my fourth child was diagnosed with a neurological disorder, my number of “hats” has increased.

What exactly is happiness? The answer isn’t a simple cut and dry definition. I think of it as a state of mind. One that exists along a spectrum from feeling blue, to elated with neutral somewhere in the middle.  Most people move along the happiness spectrum from day to day, hour to hour or even moment to moment depending on the situation and circumstances. Special needs Mom’s tend to have overly full plates and the combination of exhaustion, challenging situations, and constant stress can leave our mood falling more toward the neutral or unhappy end of the spectrum.  However, that doesn’t mean we are stuck there.  There are several things we can do for ourselves to help us shift the balance and move closer to the happier side.

Fathers who read to their infants with autism and take active roles in caregiving activities not only promote healthy development in their children, they boost moms' mental health too, new research suggests. Mothers of children with autism reported fewer depressive symptoms when their children were 4 years old if the child's father engaged in literacy and responsive caregiving activities - such as soothing children when they were upset or taking the child to the doctor - when the child was 9 months old, according to a new study conducted at the University of Illinois.

The Kid Manual (aka Welcome to Our Asperger’s) I intend on writing plagues me the most. How do I explain it? How do I say that I need his future care-takers to re-invent their thinking? How do you tell someone that when your kid says “I hate you,” he’s really saying “I lack the ability to process and handle this situation at this particular moment in time?” How do you tell another adult, a family member and person stepping in to run your household in a time of great need that they are going to have to re-learn child care-taking from the ground up?