delayedtoddler

“An Unruly pupil’s first day at school photo credit Nationaal Archeif, flickr.com

According to the BBC News website, a government-commissioned study showed that special needs parents need help. My response? No kidding! I could have saved the UK govenrment a lot of money and given them the same answer. As a parent to a special needs child, I, too, feel like I have had to fight the system every step of the way. For goodness sake, I’ve been fighting for a diagnosis since B was 9 months old!

I know too many other parents who have to take on their school boards to get their children the help they require. Even help that is explicitly listed in their Idependent Education Plans (IEPs) has gone ignored. And heaven forbid if you want to hold your child back a year! You need to be ready to go toe to toe with the school board for that one.

So, yes, parents of special needs children need help. I am so glad we now have a Resource Teacher to help us wade through the red tape and navigate the school system. We only have her because B’s speech therapist recommended signing up for special needs day care. If we hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have been connected with this agency and we would have been drifting along in ignorance of all the programs and grants we are eligible for. Every special needs family needs help to be an effective advocate on the part of their child.

As the parent of a special needs child, it broke my heart this week to hear about James Delroy’s passing. You can be the most vigilant parent in the world, and still a child can wander away. How do you ever prevent that? Seven year old James was non-verbal autistic, so even if he had heard the people searching for him, he wouldn’t have been able to respond. When he was found alive, I gave a huge sigh of relief as I’m sure many people did. It was heartbreaking to find out that he had succumbed to hypothermia. I can only imagine the pain his mother and brother are experiencing at this time.

It makes me fear the future with little B. She bolts. She hasn’t wandered yet, but she certainly could. We have installed locks high up on the doors to the outside so she can’t let herself out, but she has been known to best many of our child safety devices in the past.

Do you have a wanderer? What do you do to give yourself peace of mind?