SPHERE, a non-profit that provides programming for adults with intellectual disabilities in the Ridgefield, Connecticut area, celebrates its thirtieth anniversary on November 4, 2017. The anniversary provides an opportunity to tell the story of a successful and enduring coming together of families and community to enhance the lives of adults with disabilities, and, in doing […]
Adult Special Needs Living
The Reflex To Protect Meets The Need To Emboldened: Pushing the Envelope of Adult Employment
At many points while raising children, we come to crossroads where directional choice is complicated, when a parent’s impulse to protect their child collides with the necessity of launching their offspring into adulthood. Parents of children with disabilities have a particular challenge at these crossroads because by definition these children are more vulnerable than […]
2015 Review – Adult Special Needs & Alchemy
2015 has been a year of accomplishment for our daughter. She has been employed at The Prospector Theater three days a week as an usher and gourmet popcorn baker. Her volunteer work at Pegasus’s Rider’s Closet, a charity founded by Georgina Bloomberg, remains a steady once-weekly endeavor of shinning boots and folding riding clothes. She attends music, […]
The Power of Meaningful Employment – 1/29/15
Our twenty-five-year-old special needs daughter returned to her parents’ home to spend the latest N.E. snowstorm. We have a generator. Two days of cooking, watching The Big Bang Theory and The Fault in Our Stars and generally hanging out went swimmingly. The bedtime hour and wake up call on the last night and following morning […]
Employed! And Some Tips: 11-4-14
It has been ten months since I posted on our daughter’s adult life. In a few days she will be twenty-five years of age. And while I am counting, it is three years and four plus months since she returned to her home state to begin her special needs adulthood. What our daughter has accomplished […]
A Mother Reflects: Daughter With Special Needs Surpasses Doctors’ Predictions (from NYMetroParents)
My following post was first published as an article in NY Metro Parents on March 24, 2014. (Click here to read it on NYMetroParents.com) Our 24-year-old daughter lives in a two-bedroom apartment, 15 minutes from our home, with another young woman and staff supervision. She has two volunteer jobs and one paying job. Her volunteer […]
Unbridled Joy, Some Ick And A Great Cocktail: 12-17-13
Twenty-Four and She’s So Much More: Three months have passed since I posted on our daughter’s adult life. And the reason rests in the paws of our new puppy Tillie, whose own developmental stages have usurped much of my writing time with her walking, leaping, nipping and general mayhem-ing. Across town our daughter is developing […]
Life Is A Horse Show: 9-19-13
Catching Up: Our daughter’s life is streaming live with new peace and purpose. Just in the last week, patches of the quilt that I have dreamed of for years are now in place. The first, that she would find a venue to inspire her to resume creating the amazing collages which I used as illustrations […]
A Small Adjustment With Big Implications: 8-8-13
Who Will Teach Her Now? In a June 2011 post I wrote of my concern that our daughter, having aged out of her school system at 21 years old, would no longer benefit from an academic setting. The areas of significant challenge, time, money and numbers would languish on the vine, leaving that group of […]
Riverview School Two Years Hence: 6-27-13
A Place Where Everyone Knows Your Name: June 14 our daughter and her parents sallied up to Cape Cod to attend Riverview School’s Fifteenth Annual Gala under the castle-like shimmering white tent on the campus in East Sandwich. Except for one sad and brief visit in September of 2011 to attend a memorial for a […]
Trophy Gal, A Note of Hope for Parents & What Friends Don’t Know: 5-23-13
Speeding Through May: This has been a glorious month for our daughter, and there is still another week. She was awarded the “Adult Rider of the Year” award at the 32nd Annual Pegasus Horse Show which was presented by her idol equestrian Georgina Bloomberg, a surprise that nearly blew her helmet off. In early May […]
News Update on Parenting Adult Special Needs: 4-30-13
Two Years Have Past: Two years ago today I wrote this post: Becoming a Consumer: 4-30-11 Admission Paperwork: On Friday, May 6th, our daughter becomes a client of her service agency. The other mother and I are instructed to bring psychological evaluations, documentation of all income sources such as SSI and SSA; Medicaid and social […]
A Puppy Passes & Newtown Loses Twenty Angels and Its Heart: 1/17/13
Too Much Sadness: Since my last post about our daughter’s adult special needs life, much has transpired for all Americans. A little more than a week after my posting, Newtown, Connecticut, a town adjacent to our own, became the target of a massacre unlike any our country has ever known. An intentional murder of twenty […]
Special Needs Elf & A Fire Disaster Averted: 12-6-12
An Ashy Pall: My daughter allocated Monday as her Christmas shopping with mom day. I showed up at the apartment almost on time and saw that the staff mini-van had not returned from dropping the apartment-mate at the DSO. Since I am on the lease and have the key, I entered the apartment. Just as […]
What Should I Wish For? Update on Adult Special Needs
Hurricane Sandy: Strange how the Halloween season has become a natural disaster magnet for the Northeast. Fortunately, our daughter’s Halloween festivities were celebrated prior to Sandy’s hit. She dressed as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, with a toy Toto in a basket and a brown wig perched atop her head, and attended two parties. […]
The Red Couch Is A Year Old: 8-9-12
The Red Couch Is A Year Old: The Ability Beyond Disability services manager, mover and shaker of our daughter’s residential component, invited the two moms and the residential staff to lunch to mark a year since the ladies moved into their cozy duplex/CRS (Continuous Residential Support) on August 1 in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The atmosphere and […]
The Busy Life Of A Special Needs Adult: 6-25-12
Swimmingly: In the last six weeks our daughter’s special needs adult life has been going along swimmingly, pun intended. She participated in Connecticut’s Special Olympics aquatic state finals, including spending two nights in a Southern Connecticut State University dormitory. She received a medal for her excellent riding (her “seat” as they call it) at the […]
Mom, I Know I Was Born With Eggs: Parenting Adult Special Needs One Month At A Time
Checking In: More than six weeks have gone by since I last posted on our daughter’s adult special needs life, and a busy six weeks indeed. During that time our twenty-two-year old daughter started a new volunteer job at Best Friends in Norwalk, an animal daycare and grooming center, and continued her two other vocational […]
A Humbling Journey with Warts and Blemishes for All To See: Part 2: 3-27-12
Jeez What An Adjustment: Since our daughter moved into her CRS on August 1, 2011, I have struggled to define the parameters of my role as mother in the new order. The fact that as of July 1, 2012 our daughter has become the responsibility of the State of Connecticut and a client of Ability Beyond […]
Closing In On A Year & Building Trust: 3-12-12
March 30, 2011: In a little more than two weeks it will be a year since the first post on Parenting Adult Special Needs: One Day At A Time. Last week our daughter’s entire team of staff members from ABD (Ability Beyond Disability) and her DDS (Connecticut Department of Developmental Services) case manager sat down […]
Social Graces and Seven Months: 2-27-12
Demo Day: Saturday our family attended “Demo Day” at the Pegasus Equestrian Center in Brewster, New York, where our daughter, along with other students, demonstrated her equine knowledge and skill acquired in their “Horse & Me” winter “unmounted” program. At the stable, each student in her class stood by a horse while they and their […]
Two Ladies About Town: 2-20-12
A Pekingese Named Malachy: Our daughter and I had a grand time in New York City last Monday and Tuesday. The Westminster Dog Show was a “hoot” including the “best in show” Pekingese” Malachy, who we were lucky to view in the toy group Monday evening. Our daughter compared him to a “walking mop” and […]
Heading To The Dog Show: 2-13-12
Westminster Here We Come, Woof Woof: Today our daughter and I head to Madison Square Garden in New York City to see the 136th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, a long awaited second visit to this country’s pre-eminent canine competition. And we are psyched. Our daughter has already previewed the Monday night line up […]