11 Feb
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Parents who have children with disabilities can obtain great benefit from interfacing with parents in similar situations. Contact with other parents can help parents gain information about effective treatments and educational programs, learn about the best ways of accessing services, and gain emotional support. Many Egroups and web sites for parents in Montgomery County offer opportunities for parents who have children with disabilities to share information and offer each other support; still, many parents yearn for person-to-person contact. The Parents’ Place in Glen Burnie, Maryland provides them with an excellent opportunity to communicate with other parents face-to-face. Read more »
17 Jan
The Washington, D.C. area features families from a variety of racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds. Children who grow up in this region have a wealth of opportunities to learn about other cultures and gain skills to get along in our increasingly multicultural world. At the same time, a diverse environment can pose unique challenges for children. Explicit, age-appropriate discussions about differences can greatly assist children to navigate their often complex multicultural environments. Read more »
12 Dec
Parents who have children with special needs can benefit greatly from the expertise of professionals, many of whom can provide sound guidance and effective treatment. In addition, parents can benefit from emotional support and practical advice from other parents. Many parents of children with special needs are very knowledgeable about services and treatments, and are also in an excellent position to offer guidance regarding behavioral issues, as well as how to attend to the needs of the whole family. Read more »
23 Nov
My last post introduced positive time-out. Positive time-outs are intended to interrupt problem behaviors and to help children calm down and gain self-control. When children are young the time-out both teaches them how to do this and gives them an opportunity to exercise those new skills. As the child gets older, time-out is both a reminder to the child to regain control over himself and a push to do so.
Here are some tips for using positive time-outs with the different age groups of childhood.
Read more »
17 Nov
Wardens, coaches and parents all use time-outs. In prisons, inmates are placed in solitary confinement to reprimand and punish. Athletic teams use time-out to recover, regroup or strategize. For parents, the athletic style time-out can be a useful strategy for stopping problem behaviors in the moment and fostering self-control in the long term. Using the penal style time-out with children is sometimes effective in the instant, but over the long term it tends to backfire. If we tell someone, adult or child, to sit in the corner for five minutes and think about what he did wrong, he is far more likely to be nurturing his anger and resentment than reflecting on his mistakes and considering how to atone. Read more »
12 Nov
Because the process of separation and divorce leads to the end of a nuclear family, family therapy for divorcing families strikes many as an oxymoron. What would be the purpose of helping a family communicate and function better if the family is ending? But while loss and endings are inherent in separation and divorce, the process is also one in which families families reorganize, establish new patterns of relating, and find new roles and tasks for individual family members. Family therapy can be a powerful tool for families to attend to these tasks. Read more »
12 Nov
As families who have teens and adults with developmental disabilities like autism and Down Syndrome endeavor to launch their children towards adulthood, one of their biggest tasks is accessing services to help maximize their children’s independence. Many organizations provide excellent programs which offer residential, educational, therapeutic, recreational, and vocational services, as well as socialization opportunities and respite care. But unlike schools that offer “one-stop shopping” for many children and teens, as children transition to adulthhood families have to navigate a myriad of agencies to get their children the help they need. Moreover, funding is often scarce, and waiting lists are often long. Tragically, because services are so uncoordinated and difficult to access, many people with disabilities are not able to make use of many valuable opportunities, and thus are not able to maximize their level of independence.
The web site of Jonah Green and Asssociates has developed an area of its web site dedicated to providing families in Montgomery County, MD who have teens and adults with developmental disabilities with access to services, resources, support, and information. Please click here to access this area of the site. We will be continually updating the site–if you know of an additional resource, please comment on this blog and we will add it to the web site. Thank you.
–Posted by Jonah Green
