Special Olympics Minnesota: Athlete Leadership Programs
When he was in High School #1 participated in both adapted and mainstream school (ex: Mountain Biking) and community (ex. Minnesota Special Hockey) sports. His coaches have been some of the most important people in his life; what High School skills he’s developed came as much from his sports work as school work.Even in his High School years, however, recreational sports were becoming more challenging. His teammates turned into young adults — a somewhat difficult population for a young man with a significant cognitive disability.He’s in “transition” now (more to come on that I’m sure) and he’s almost 19. After...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - September 2, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: athletics autism education sport Twin Cities Source Type: blogs
529A (Able tax-free savings accounts) slowly state-by-state rollout starts 2016.
Able accounts are coming, slowly starting next year. On my quick review the fund looks like a good way to pay for housing.The Arc has a useful fact sheet, but it predates authorization and treasury rules are only up for public hearing in October 2015. I think some of this is now incorrect:At $100,000 SSI benefits are suspended and restarts if falls under 100K, but medicaid benefits continue. When individual dies balance goes to medicaid.residents of one state can open accounts in another state, so you don’t need to wait for your state to create an account. (But NYT article below suggests we have to wait? Confusing)benefi...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - August 29, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: adult cognitive impairment disability law housing legal policy Source Type: blogs
Free online training program for Minnesota special needs workers
The Arc of Minnesota and the University of Minnesota are making Elsevier Publishing’s online training programs available free of charge to Minnesota residents; the list price for one of these courses is about $300. They are designed to support training special needs professionals.There are four training programs, each with a university sponsor:Direct Support (University of Minnesota): designed for direct support professionals (DSPs) and others who support individuals with disabilities.Employment services (UMass): "designed for professionals who support people with disabilities and other challenges to find employment"Pe...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - August 24, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: education employment Source Type: blogs
US to fund less than one staff person per state to support special education information
Early in our 13 years of experience with special education we were surprised that our new country was unmapped. Surely someone had a map somewhere!But they didn’t. Nobody has a map. There are Federal mandates, like IEP plans, that are common everywhere, but each state has its own details. Parents rely on organizations, like the Autism Society and Pacer, to fill the gaps. Parents with the ability to join volunteer at school or join volunteer organizations hear of essential programs by word of mouth. Relatively wealthy parents hire specialist lawyers to get the inside scoop.Why isn’t there a map? I suspect it’s an emer...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - August 18, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: disability law education finance sharing knowledge Source Type: blogs
Magical thinking
Many people have superstitions of one kind or another. Our #1 has more than a few, and they contribute to his disabilities. For example, he bicycles miles out of his way to take certain favored routes for no reason he can describe.He’s had these problems all his life. The only thing I can compare them too is a beloved dog of ours who developed an intractable aversion to the back yard of a new home. Nothing, absolutely nothing, would persuade her to put her paws on the unfrozen ground there. We have no idea where this came from, but it never wavered over the last seven years of her life.It may be some dysfunctional associ...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - August 10, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: adult autism brain and mind cognitive impairment persuasion sport Source Type: blogs
On being a special needs parent...
You are walking in a quiet wood. It is morning with a mild breeze. You dip your cup into the stream ...An arrow sinks deep into the earth by your left foot. You leap forward, in mid-air notch an arrow and let fly on landing where you know your assailant will be. There are 3 of them, rested and deadly. The battle is joined.The quiet returns. You dip your cup into the stream. You are always ready...E prefers to think of this as akido, always equipoised to redirect the attack. I like ninja myself, cause I’m a guy.It’s like that. You never know when a crisis will strike. When an innocent question will suddenly become a 30 ...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - July 14, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: family Source Type: blogs
Imagining my son's memory
I want to understand how my son thinks, including how he remembers things. I think I can use that knowledge to help him be the best he can be. If I understood his mind, for example, I might be table to distinguish his memories from inventions and deceptions.This kind of understanding isn’t easy. Not everyone thinks alike. Some “normal" people seem to think with visual images, other people, like me, do almost no visualization. Understanding the normal mind is hard, but my son’s mind runs on extra-buggy wetware. It’s even harder to model.One clue comes from self-reports of people like Temple Grandin, an autistic adu...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - July 8, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: brain and mind cognition cognitive impairment Source Type: blogs
Special needs: so now have to worry about ISIS recruiters?
The New York Times did a good job describing ISIS (ISIL, Daeshite) recruitment of a cognitively limited 23yo woman. She’s not explicitly described as adult special needs, but she has a fatal alcohol syndrome diagnosis and limited employment options. She’s not that different from the kids and adults we care for.Unsurprisingly her ISIL recruiter is not terribly high functioning himself.It reminds me of the relatively harmless cults of the 1970s, but in those cults there wasn’t a lot of upside to special needs recruitment The cults wanted fundraisers; a certain amount of psychological disability was a feature, but speci...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - July 5, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: adult cognitive impairment computer crime Source Type: blogs
Lessons from 18 years of a "disruptive mood dysregulation disorder" child
Just back from a Mountain Bike outing with #1. We had a great time. Can’t be that that many special needs NICA mountain bike racers; it’s something he’s proud of. He’s already telling tall tales of his daring runs. Another happy memory.It didn’t have to be happy though. I’d planned a 3 day trip — some biking, some hanging, some other stuff. Instead after biking on day one he said he wanted to go home. Of course I’d already paid for two nights of peak season lodging.It’s not clear why he cut the trip short, but in retrospect 3 relatively unstructured days was a lot for him. To make that workable I’d have...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - June 21, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: ADHD adolescence adult athletics autism cognitive impairment Explosive Child sport Source Type: blogs
Shared reminders for family use - iCloud, iOS, OS X and even Windows Outlook.
iOS and OS X Reminders can be shared among family members. A very useful way to remind #1 or #2 of things they otherwise have trouble with.I’m adding practice with this to #1’s personalized learning iPad curriculum. (Source: Be the Best You can Be)
Source: Be the Best You can Be - April 10, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: adult autism technology Source Type: blogs
Personalized learning with a school iPad in special needs: Feedly and Pinboard shares
I may be have an opportunity to do some more writing, in which case I’ll have more to say about the good and imperfect aspects of our school district’s iPad-based personalized learning program for special needs students.One imperfect aspect of the program is that it doesn’t exist just yet. The school iPad is real though, so #1 and I are doing something on our own. He completes daily assignments to earn home WiFi services for his school iPad. One part of the program that works well is using a Feed Reader [1], in our case Feedly. I’ve subscribed him to a number of Feeds including6 NYT section feeds [2]7 local and na...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - March 29, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: adult autism cognitive impairment education reading school sharing knowledge technology Source Type: blogs
Things we might have done differently: High School
#1 is finishing High School. Some good things have happened in High School, but if we could rerun the tape we’d have tried something different — perhaps a local charter school that specializes in autism disorders.The Junior and Senior years have been remarkably weak. I think this is partly due to local conditions; we’ve seen problems with leadership, policies, and funding — particularly funding and support for class aides.I don’t think that’s the whole story though — I suspect very few schools or school districts have figured out how to manage special education for ages 16-19, particularly in integrated setti...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - March 2, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: adolescence adult education school Source Type: blogs
Curbi - iOS controls for special needs teens and adults
curbi gives parents, guardians and other caregivers the monitoring technology Apple built for corporate customers. It’s $7/month “Per household”.You can’t use it with school iPads because they already have similar “management profile” technology installed. It should work with home devices.It’s something I’m considering. (Source: Be the Best You can Be)
Source: Be the Best You can Be - March 1, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: adolescence adult community family technology Source Type: blogs
Clarity - Plantronics brand producing senior products is relevant to special needs
After age 70 or so we are almost all “special needs”. By 80 cognitive decline, sensory issues, and memory loss puts the average adult firmly into the special needs category [1].So aging boomers are great news for special needs young — there’s now a reasonably profitable marketplace to support products of interest to the special needs community. That’s why we’re seeing affordable monitoring tech (DropCam), tracking tech (Find Friends.app), and Plantronics Clarity brand.The Clarity brand markets amplification, but that’s a bit of a polite facade. The brand is really about simplification - amplification is rela...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - January 4, 2015 Category: Disability Tags: cognitive impairment technology Source Type: blogs
Guardianship (Minnesota)
We went through the Minnesota guardianship procedure with #1. He was anxious and sad — both appropriate. The procedure went better than we’d expected and he was in good spirits afterwords. A few notes if this is on your radar:It’s a courtroom legal procedure with two “opposing” attorneys and a judge. In most cases of uncontested special needs guardianship the attorneys are probably cooperating rather than truly oppositional, but legally they are opposed. We had our lawyer and #1 had his lawyer.We used a legal procedure the county recommended for #1’s lawyer - In forma pauperis. Since he has no assets he can get...
Source: Be the Best You can Be - December 30, 2014 Category: Disability Tags: adolescence adult legal Source Type: blogs
