Once upon a time there was an occupational therapist who cared very deeply about her young patients. She looked around and noticed with sadness that the playgrounds around her were not inclusive for them. They couldn’t swing. They couldn’t slide. They couldn’t climb on the equipment. Yet, because there was a paved walkway, the parks met the requirements of “accessible”. It didn’t seem fair.
Luckily, this particular doctor was Dr. Nicole Julia, and she happened to be a dreamer. Her dream was so big that it went beyond her own city having a playground. It went to all the children living with different abilities, all over the world. She dreamed of a world where everyone is accepted exactly as they are and all children know deep down inside that they can do ANYTHING.
Thank goodness she did. Because her dream is coming true!
It begins with a series of books called the Able Fables. The first installment, Gary’s Gigantic Dream is charming. As a mom of a child with multiple special needs, it actually brought tears to my eyes. My son beamed as we read. He squealed with excitement as he saw Gary, a darling giraffe, receiving a green wheelchair just like his! He waved and laughed with delight at the images of featured children in the photo gallery at the back.
Kids just like him!Kids who are sparkling additions to the world we live in. Kids who deserve all the same opportunities as everyone else, beginning with the right to play!
There was even a space for my son’s own photo, and to fill in his own story and big dream, affirming that he is able just like Gary! I don’t think words can express what that meant to him, and to me.
We understood little Gary’s emotions as he chose and was fitted for his first wheelchair. We cheered as his chair empowered him to play and engage with other people. We witnessed him grow up and live his own dream of teaching other children that they can do anything they set their hearts to. Gary was inspiring, not only to my son but to me, to keep reaching for our own goals and believe that anything is possible.
Meet the visionary behind the Able Fables: Nicole is a down-to-earth person with a warm smile that expresses her genuine love for people. She describes herself as a “gymnast, turned diver” (by the way, she has caught a 7.5 foot shark!) “turned photographer, turned occupational therapist and author.”
When asked if she had always dreamed of being an author, Nicole told a pretty inspiring story. “No, I sure did not!…God has worked through me in incredible ways. When I was in OT school, I joked with my teacher that I would write a book on wheelchair seating and positioning after learning how comprehensive and individualized the process is. A year later, I was studying for boards in a coffee shop, and I had a poem stuck in my head out of nowhere. I grabbed my journal, and 30 minutes later, I had written my first book, and I cried (cus I do that a lot)!”
So what is inclusion, and why is it such a huge passion for her? Nicole shares, “Superficially, inclusion can be defined as the act of being accepted. At its core, inclusion requires profound love, empathy, understanding, and a willingness to steps outside of one’s comfort zone to invite an individual to participate fully in life’s occupations. Inclusion is holistic. To be included, one must be invited to participate in work, education, play, leisure, socialization, and the community. Why do I love it? Without inclusion, we are missing out on amazing people, new opportunities, and abundancy in life.”
Abuntancy in life sounds like a vision we all can get behind. In a world where it sometimes seems empathy is in short supply, Nicole is shining her light brightly by sharing her dream of inclusion with as many people she can! I thoroughly enjoyed hearing what she had to say about her vision. You can too, it’s all at theablefables.com!
Making a difference: As of this printing, well over 4,000 dollars has already been donated to building inclusive playgrounds by this passionate organization, and they are just getting started! Twenty per cent of sales from the Able Fables books will go to build inclusive playgrounds! Think what a tremendous impact that can make for children all over who are waiting and eager for their chance to play?
When I look over the Able Fables website, I want ALL the products! The clothing for kids and adults is adorable and colorful, featuring designs with powerful messages like, “We’re All Able!” and “What a lovely day to be inclusive!” On the website you can also download coloring pages featuring the adorable characters from the stories, and a guide to inclusive playgrounds!
The playgrounds are just one of so many reasons these books are important! Representation for children all over the world who are real and have real feelings is just as vital. I once went to my local library and asked for books about children with disabilities. They produced one book — one –and it was okay. It was meant to educate young children that everyone is different, not a bad goal by any means. BUT…there wasn’t a story in it. There was not a leader with different abilities setting the example of reaching for their goals and acheiving them.
The Able Fables have that. For those of us raising differently abled but very ABLE children, that story of a leader just like them is the IT factor that makes these books a dream come true. My son saw himself in those pages as strong, able, and needed by the world around him. You really can’t place a premium on that (but as a bonus the books are very affordable).
The second message of hope in the Able Fables series is coming soon, Lia’s Kind Mind. Featuring Lia, a little lion with a port wine stain birthmark on her face. Although she looks different, she knows she is beautiful, smart, and unique, and that her kindness is where her true value lies. She’s able, and can confidently reach for her dreams as a world class gymnast! We can’t wait to read it!
More titles are in the works, featuring children living with blindness, limb differences, autism and sensory difficulties, hearing impairment, chromosomal differences, and more — so make sure to follow this amazing series as child after child learns that they are able to be whatever they want to be.
Imagine that message making its way into classrooms across North America — and the world. Imagine a world where all children know, beyond a doubt, that they are able to make an impact for good. That they are important. That they can dream as big as anybody else. How important is that message, not only for kids living with different abilities, but for all children (and even adults)? Because really, kids with “special needs” have the same needs as everyone else: They need to be included, valued, supported, and loved. They need to play and dream and achieve.
We can create a world like this! We can give them playgrounds, we can give the gift of encouragement through the Able Fables books and the messages on the apparel, we can help the children around us to dream as big as Gary the Giraffe and Dr. Nicole Julia.
A few ideas of ways we can make Gary’s Gigantic Dream a reality in our own communities:
We can donate Able Fables books to our local schools and libraries!
We can gift Able Fables books to friends and family!
We can actively promote the need for inclusive playgrounds in our communities, and give to that worthy cause!
We can practice inclusion and show our kids that everyone is able by building strong friendships with people of diverse abilities!
We can read the Able Fables with our own children and raise up an inclusive generation of dreamers for a better world.
I thought about calling this post Cereal for Dinner, because that has saved me so many times. It was the best piece of advice I receved when tackling single momming for the first time. I felt like I was neck deep in quicksand just trying to keep my kids from sinking. Painfully aware that our life moving forward would look nothing like life had before.
One of the first things to go when I went to work full-time was time to cook. I felt guilty about it (although there was no need to feel that way).
One evening I was picking my children up from a place where they used to visit their dad. I felt haggard and was trying my best to hide it. It was a little past dinner time and we hadn’t eaten yet, and I was pinching pennies, but we were going to eat. Only I didn’t know what just yet.
The lady at the front desk, making small talk while we waited for the kids, asked what we were having for dinner. I forced a chuckle and said I wasn’t sure yet but something good.
In spite of my forced laugh, inside I felt tears sneaking their way out, which I tried to hide, but I think she knew. Just because someone asked what you’re having for dinner? Get a grip! I told myself.
This wonderful woman, who had been through the same hard transition we were going through, said, “You know it’s okay to have cereal for dinner, right? You are doing your best and there is a lot going on and sometimes just having cereal lets you have some time to relax with your kids instead of cooking and dishes.”
Searching now for words to describe the gift that her perspective gave me that day. Until that moment I had felt even more pressure to be perfect as a single mom than I had when I was married, and lots of pressure then too. It’s the world we live in isn’t it? There is always mom guilt for something, and we try to do it all, and we can’t because we are human. It’s okay. Give yourself grace and your kids a bowl of cereal. (Ice cream works too).
Sanity is healthy.
Time with my kids was more important. Them having a mom who was relaxed and had a little time for them in the evening was more important (and healthier) than all of us staying up late because dinner wasn’t ready and mom is overtired and now there’s dishes too. Happy together is healthier. Together is healthier.
As the truth of this all sank in, I felt like I wasn’t sinking quite as fast anymore — at least that evening — and so I feel a need to pass that along to you who might be in a similar boat. It’s okay to have cereal for dinner.
You and your children are on a journey together. Life is more than a long string of dinners. Life is messy. You can’t control it’s ups and downs. You can only do the best you can to major in joy on the way, and share as many smiles with your kids as possible while you have them. Seasons come and go. Cereal for dinner may just be a season, but it’s not an ugly one truth be told. It’s sweet.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying stop trying. But there are seasons in life when you need help and sometimes it comes in the form of a box in the pantry.
We don’t have cereal every single night, but there were seasons that were a combination of broke and busy when we had it every night for a few days in a row. Just when I was feeling guilty for it, one of the kids would exclaim, “Yay! We get cereal again! This time I’m having…” choosing their favorite from the pantry and feeling grown up because I let them pour their own milk.
They didn’t think I was a bad mom. They thought they were getting a treat and we got to read stories and cuddle on the couch a little bit and went to sleep smiling.
So now I’m going to get really deep here. Life is like a bowl of cereal, but not this one:
Life is more like this one, messy:
Only instead of that healthy looking grainy cereal, it would bee like those rainbow colored circles — crazy and not so pretentious, but still sweet.
P.S. Cereal for breakfast AND dinner happens too. And it’s also okay. Also approved are ice cream, donuts, crackers with peanut butter, popcorn, or basically anything that helps you stay sane as a mom on a night when you feel like crying over dinner.
Moral of the story: Sometimes cereal for dinner keeps life sweet. And making life sweet for your kids is never ever something to feel guilty about.
Maybe today you are in the place I was back then, in tears over the very daily question of what’s for dinner? Maybe you feel that yucky mom guilt and you wish you had more time with your kids. Or, maybe you can’t relate to this post AT ALL, and if that’s the case then good for you, but for those who can: You got this, Mama. It’s going to be okay.
Sweat dripped down my forehead and I rushed to the kitchen for a glass of water. The lump in my throat and gut seemed to have settled in permanently over the earlier weeks due to some personal struggles that our family was going through. I had scarcely ever felt as insecure as a mother as I did through that season, or even in the years since.
That night the feeling was palpable, almost audible, as if a malevolent figure stood behind me, hissing. “You’re not a good enough mother…your kids aren’t going to thrive…you’re going to lose at life, at family, at everything important to you…you are a failure…”
Somehow, as the same familiar discourse was playing in my ear and I could almost smell the stench of the deception, it hit me like a bayonet to the heart: I was in a war. Not against any person, but against that voice that wouldn’t leave, against the lies that whispered shame night after night, and against the tumultuous sea of emotions that were trying to gain ground in my heart, hitting me like a tidal wave threatening to take me out.
In that dark moment in the still of the night, my babies asleep in their beds, I stood my ground. I squared my shoulders. Something had to give and it couldn’t — could not — be me.
I had cried. I had tossed and turned. I had worried, with a nail-biting-sweat-inducing anxiety, for weeks.
Now something rose up in my heart and I spoke aloud into the darkness, “You can’t have me and you can’t have my children. I am going to win this battle — and this war! We are going to be okay!”
I drank my water, I went to bed and actually slept. The mom who awoke in the morning was a more positive and more present mother than I had been through most of the struggle.
Please don’t get me wrong, I AM NOT naturally brave or strong. The emotion, the “enemy”, that had worn me down so much during that season of life was Fear. My natural instinct is to protect my children and when something seems to threaten them, whether it’s disability, a bully, a tough emotion, or any other real threat, that thing rises up in me that does in most mama bears.
This time, it seemed so far out of my hands that I began to believe Fear’s lie that I couldn’t do it. If I couldn’t protect my cubs, despite my best efforts, well that felt…scary.
Fear is always a liar. He’s a nasty old man full of bitterness at his own failures, who masquerades as a terrible warrior coming for your family.
Listen to me: you are the warrior, and he is actually terrified of you. You have the power to stand and fight for your family. You are in the trenches, and if he takes you down he will move on to your children. You terrify Fear because he knows he can only gain ground if you give yours up. He can’t take you by his nefarious whispering. He can’t take you by lying in your ear in the still of the night. He can’t take you unless you let him shake you: and he knows it.
Which is what I had been doing, unintentionally. I let him rob my energy, which robbed time with my children. I let him rob my confidence, which made me less able to speak into them the good that I needed to. Oh, I was trying, but I was having my legs cut from under me by this villain I now know by name. This Fear.
Once upon another time, sitting in a clinic in Uganda with a little boy who was also fighting a battle of his own, some of the wisest words I ever heard came from that 12-year-old, and I have never forgotten. He said, “Sometimes life is hard but we just have to go through it. You will just go through it. I will just go through it.” We both came out the other side, as he predicted, not entirely unscathed, but maybe at least a little braver.
Back to that night in the kitchen: That defining moment in the midnight changed a lot about how I fight my battles. Have I ever slipped up again? Oh yes. Have I listened once in a while to those whispers and lies in the dark? Have I wrestled through sleepless nights? Yes, and yes. I’m still human. Life still ebbs and flows. But I learned something that night, even if I sometimes forget.
I learned that I have the upper hand, and when I play it, Fear shakes in his own dusty boots.
Here’s a short list of things that help me remember that:
Getting out of my head and into my body — run, dance, jump, scream and shout. Anything to remind you that you are a force to be reckoned with.
Journal it or speak it to an empty room. Getting your thoughts and feelings out and speaking affirmatons like, “We are going to get through this! I am going to win this battle for my kids!” is very powerful. You believe it a little more each time you say it, and some days that little more makes a big difference!
Connect with your kids and with a warrior queen mama friend who gets it. Spending time with the ones we love who love us back affirms our purpose and reignites the passion and fire we need to stand our ground for them.
Remember, there is hope. Every mountain, and I mean every mountain, has another side once you reach the precipice. It can seem like it’s taking forever, it can seem like relief is never coming. Hold on to your rope and press on, because you are closer than you think to that peak — and then it gets better.
Mamas, Daddies, you are in a battle every day. Whether you know it or not, whether you want to be or not. Fear is coming for our children. Will we fight for them? You bet!
Right now, we stand for them and by watching us stand they learn to stand for themselves.
Right now, we speak into the darkness on the sleepless nights, but they will have sleepless nights of their own. We teach them what to say to send Fear fleeing in the opposite direction.
Right now, we stand ground for our young ones. Someday they will need to stand their own ground.
Have we shown them the skills they need to stand in their hardest battles? Have we trained them to confidently win their wars?
This world won’t back down. A constant barrage of challenges are thrown our direction daily. Relational challenges, emotional challenges, financial, academic, career-related, spiritual challenges. We can feel like Fear won’t back down, so well…we can not back down either.
If we don’t give in when Fear comes calling, odds are in favor that our children won’t.
That, my friends, is how mama bear warriors win for their kids. Stay strong tonight, mama. You are a force to be reckoned with. Fear doesn’t stand a chance.
Billy is on the playground. He tries the monkey bars, but it hurts his hands. He cries for a minute, then walks away with his head down while another kid laughs at his expense. Next time he’s there, he tells himself not to try again. No sense getting his hands and his ego both hurt.
Chrissy’s parents are getting divorced. The fear of the future lookng different, combined with grief for the family she thought would always look the same, have paralyzed her. She doesn’t want to get out of bed, but isn’t even sure why, let alone how to “fix” her “attitude”.
Joy struggles in math. She is hesitant to ask for help, embarassed that her classmates have figured her secret out. So she pretends to be sick on the day of her test, even though she will have to take it sooner or later, at least she can put it off one more day.
What’s a parent to do?
Stress and anxiety aren’t just for adults. Our children face scenarios that challenge them on the daily — physically, emotionally, and relationally. Some kids seem to have the ability to press on in spite of challenges: to look the figurative monkey bars square in the face and determine to conquer. Others are easily beaten down by their trials and struggle to cope. This doesn’t make them weak. That is a point to be repeated. Children’s brains are still developing and learning. They only learned how to use words instead of tears a couple short years ago. How could they possess the problem-solving skills they need to navigate the tumultuous waters of grief, stress, and anxiety?
Building resilience in our kids takes time, and they learn best from our example and our presence. As adults we don’t like to feel alone in our problems and pains, neither do children. As much as we desire to give them what they need when we see them struggling, we become awkward and lost sometimes when handling the really heavy stuff. We don’t want to drop the heavy things — we don’t want to break their hearts.
Caring about them yet feeling unsure and insecure about how to help, what to say, what not to say, can lead to inaction. It’s not that we don’t want to help, we aren’t sure what to say or do, so we freeze. Sometimes this amounts to acting like nothing is wrong. Sometimes it sounds like, “Why are you so mopey these days?” Sometimes it looks like being too busy. Our own feelings can be wounded when our child acts out hard emotions, and we might feel like backing down. It may look like that’s what the child wants. It’s not.
What is resilience?
Resilience is best described as the art of getting back up! What do you dobefore a sales pitch that helps you think straight even though you feel nervous? What does a professional athlete do before a big game to maximise performance? What allows you to smile, help and be present when you visit someone in the hospital without allowing your worry to overpower the conversation? How do you simmer down after a hard conversation or conflict so it doesn’t play on repeat in your head for the next week? That’s resilience.
We all know that we never calm down by being told, “Calm down!” or relax when we hear, “Relax, will ya?” The words “It’s okay,” don’t always make us sure that it is okay. Sometimes we just feel deep down inside that something is not right. We don’t feel safe.
When our children experience this, they often struggle to find the words to name what their emotions are telling them. They know something’s “not okay,” but they sometimes think that means with them. Life experience teaches us that hard times come and go, that life ebbs and flows like waves washing over the sand.Kids simply haven’t been around that long, so they wonder why they feel that way, they get angry with themselves, they want it to just go away. Children need to know, they can chase the scaries away. They can find the rainbow, even before the storm passes.
Here are a few suggestions on how to build those skills in our children.
Ways to Strengthen Resilience in Kids
Listen, without fixing. This one is easier said than done. It’s natural to want to solve our children’s problems and point them in the right direction, but when we do they lose confidence. Sometimes through speaking their situation out loud to empathetic ears, a little light breaks through. Getting it all out in the open can be a great silencer of that negative voice that says, “it can’t be solved. It will never get better.” We MUST silence that voice first, before they can listen to us or to their good hearts telling them the right thing.
Strong relationships with adults: Studies have revealed that when a child has at least one trusting and secure bond with an adult they feel safe around — but the more the better — that relationship has the power to lower their stress levels and strengthen their resolve to keep trying. This is where you come in, moms and dads, grandmas, aunts, uncles, granddads! Walk with them, sit with them, play and laugh with them, hug them and remind them they matter to you. Just the knowledge that someone is there if they need you goes a very long way.
Let them leap (cover your eyes if you have to)! We learn what we’re made of when we push our limits. Kids do this naturally — climbing trees, jumping from progressively higher structures — they can give a parent a thousand mini heart attacks before they’re even in elementary school! And we say, “Stop! It’s not safe!” with the very best intentions to protect their little craniums. Allow them to push themselves, it’s how they learn they can fly. I mean this within reason, of course, but even so. The faith they gain in themselves is a source of great courage and resilience, when they know that they know that they CAN do hard things after all! It’s even worth that little gasp we take when they climb a little too high!
Give mistakes a big hug. Embrace them, that is. Mistakes are how we learn. We make as many of them as our kids do, they just change as we get older. Give yourself and your children grace in those moments. Let the driving question not be “Whose fault was it?” but instead, “What did we learn from it?”
Give them a road map for feelings. Children have BIG feelings, but aren’t always sure what they’re feeling. Kids also tend to label feelings as “good” or “bad.” That labeling can cause them to feel guilty or like something’s wrong with them when they can’t quickly shake off grief or anger. That can feel like carrying around a big sack of rocks, with more rocks piling in faster than they can throw them out. It’s up to us to teach our children that each emotion has a place and time. Our feelings tell us what we need so we can take care of ourselves, there are no “bad” ones. Some aren’t so fun, but we need them all. Teaching kids to name them can go a long way to empower them to meet the needs that are expressed in those emotions — the need may be a hug, a break, a reconciliation, a little grace, the list goes on. This takes a lot of patience, because while we are trying to map out the emotion and the path to healing, the child is a little tornado swirling with emotion they can’t express. Be their calm in the storm, work through it with them. Listening is your valuable tool here, you can decode them through their actions when they don’t know what to say.
Soak up the sun! Big feelings can make us live inside our head. Get into your body and help them get into theirs. Take a walk, sign up for sports, go to the park. There is no bad weather, only the wrong clothes! Put on a rain coat and splash around. Put on a knit cap and gloves and throw snowballs. Not only does the sun’s natural brightness make us feel a little brighter, we really can stomp and run and shake off a lot of tough emotions. Getting that blood pumping through our hands and feet and brain just makes some situations come clearer. Even if the probem isn’t gone, we feel more in control after good old fashioned motion. Because we are moving forward — we are not stuck!
Resilience is contagious. Breathe it out and in, exude it. Surround yourself and your children with it. Like anything, this becomes easier with practice. If you look at a problem asking, “How can I solve this?” your children notice. If you look at a bad day and say, “Well the good thing about this day is…” your children will hear. If you aren’t afraid to say, “Well, that was a mistake, but next time I will…” your kids won’t be afraid to either.
Hold on tight! Good old fashioned grit, the ability to grab on for dear life and push through, comes from hope. Hope grows in the fertile soil of a soul that survives. Just like the daisies in my yard survive every winter and burst through again in the spring, and it seems like the cold that should kill them only multiplies them, that is hope inside the human spirit. We have survived hard things before, we know we can do it again. That confident assurance is what we pass to our children. It may be the greatest skill we can pass to them.
Grab on to your hope and hold on tight while the wind rages around, you will in the end survive the storm and stand again on solid ground.
But we are in a hurry. This world we live in — rushing to school and work, rushing to cook dinner after, rushing to activities and appointments — can make it feel like quality moments together are few and far between.
At the end of these long exhausting days, we tuck them in, whisper, “I love you.” Work a little more, then fall into bed asking ourselves, “Did I show it today? Did it sink in? Do they know?”
They know. Here’s what your kids would say on those crazy, out-of-your-mind-days:
I know you love me when you say it, even in passing, even once or twice a day.
When you greet me with, “Good morning, I love you!”
When you drop me off at activities and say, “Have fun! Love ya!”
When you tuck me in with a peck on the forehead and whisper, “Sweet dreams, I love you!” (Believe me, it’s not falling on deaf ears.)
I know you love me by the look in your eyes.
When you watch me play soccer with a glint of pride
When you glance at me in the rearview mirror and our eyes meet and you smile
When you take another picture of me on your phone (I know, you just can’t get enough of me)
When you glance into my bedroom a little longer after you say goodnight (I know you actually miss me when I’m asleep)
I know you love me by the way you smile.
When you say good morning
When you hand me my lunchbox and tell a silly joke (even if it’s not that funny)
When you pick me up from school and smile like we haven’t seen each other in a year (it makes me feel like a movie star)
When you laugh at my jokes (even when they aren’t that funny)
When you kiss me goodnight
I know you love me by your little touches.
When you hug me good morning
When your hand rests on my shoulder walking into school
When you squeeze my hand on the way into the store
When you high-five me at hockey
When you tousle my hair
When you kiss me goodnight
I know you love me because you care.
When I hop in the car after school and your first question is, “How was your day?”
When you say, “Have fun!” I know you wish good things for me
When you say, “Practice the piano,” even if I don’t want to, I know it’s because you want me to do well. (Same goes for “Do your homework!”)
When you write a little note in my backpack or pack my favorite snack
I know you love me because you help me.
You help me tie my shoes in the morning (or you did until I could do it on my own. Heck, you even changed my diapers and taught me to use a potty and…)
You pick me up when I fall
You have a bandage any time I need i
tWhen I’m sad, you give me a hug
When friendships are tough, you have the best advice
I know you love me because you are here.
You’re on the sidelines cheering
You’re at your desk paying the bills (I know we need that)
You’re sewing my ballet slippers — again
You come when I call, even in the middle of the night
You get me where I need to go
You make sure I have food to eat
You always have my back!
Dear moms and dads, even on the craziest of crazy busy days, your little people are watching and listening. They know they are loved, and they love you too!
In an earlier post I talked about the heroes we meet on our journey as special needs parents. We find those sparkling gems, courageous mothers, teachers and professionals, and we help each other along the way.
Today I’m excited to share a story with you about one such mother. Like most of us, Tina Karimian was scared when she learned that her son, Kelvin had special needs, but this brave mama only let it fuel her drive to learn what she needed to help her child succeed. Now, she runs We Kidz, an organization that exists to help other families navigate the world of special needs parenting and give their children the best.
Tina and Kelvin, confident and living their best life!
“From the beginning, when I found out my son was not able to talk or respond, I got depressed. I blamed myself…a lot. At one point I decided to make changes, but I didn’t know what to do or where to start.” Once the initial shock and grief process passed, Tina knew the only thing she could do was act. She went to the fight for her child, and started winning, although it was an uphill climb.
“I mixed spiritual healing with academic practices to boost …my son’s development, and I was quite successful. Next month, he will be 6 years old and he is now able to talk, listen to instruction, read, write and attend school!” Those victories spurred Tina on in her passion and she developed a vision to help other families succeed.
Tina’s vision utilizes a holistic approach to parenting. On the website, www.globalwekidz.com, you can find everything from parenting tips to information on fine and gross motor skill development, cognitive delays, exercises to help your child, parenting tips, fun activities and educational resources, and so much more.
Have creative fun along the way!
The beautiful thing about We Kidz is that it’s not only for families of children with special needs! There are resources here that any parent will find useful and helpful for all developmental stages. You can even sponsor a child so that other families can reap the benefits of the We Kidz program! And of course, you can also subscribe to this personal and caring support system.
I love it. I can relate so much to Tina’s journey, maybe you can too. I remember like it was yesterday the day I noticed something wasn’t alright about my baby. Thus began the terrifying process of searching for a diagnosis, and hearing those words no mother expects to hear. I felt so alone and like Tina, I used to blame myself. If something like this program had been available to me when my son was diagnosed, I could have felt so much less alone in the process. That is what Tina wants to give to other families, the hope and knowledge that they are not alone.
“I started this business only because of my son,” — or so she thought. Tina says, “As I learned and experienced, I realized it was about me…I have confidence that if it worked for my son, it can work for other children too. As parents, we take the first step, work towards our children’s goals and stay consistent. The program we designed is all about educating parents and providing them with strategies and activities to help them in their journey.”
As parents I think we all can relate to that defining moment when we realized that our own determination to help our child the best way we could is their main ingredient to reaching their goals. Most of us who have children living with disability and special needs know how accurate Tina’s words are, “it was all about me.”
Maybe you are at the starting gate right now, you recently received your child’s diagnosis and are feeling overwhelmed and unsure where to turn or how to begin. You are not alone. You don’t have to figure it all out by yourself. Reach out to other special needs parents, comment below, and reach out to Tina and We Kidz. There are so many of us who have been where you are now. It gets better. There are days it will feel like the fight of your life, because it is, but we want you to know: you can do this!
Visit We Kidz online here to learn more about what We Kidz has to offer, and how you can make a difference for your child or for others. Check out www.globalwekidz.com, meet my friend Tina and find companionship on your parenting journey.
Reading is a magic key that takes you where you want to be!
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