Product Description
Many people attempt to address issues concerning developmentally disabled children and their families from a purely academic viewpoint. Others have very personal experiences with little or no professional or academic background. Both can be beneficial and provide helpful information, but they both also have potential pitfalls and limitations.The purpose here is to use personal experience along with professional and academic information to help professionals, parents, and siblings in their adjustment to their new journey. The goal is to assist families in ways of achieving balance between taking care of the needs of parents to continue to develop themselves, their relationships, their non-disabled children, and the disabled family member. The ideas presented here are not intended to address specific disabilities. They are to provide perspective and some general helpful ideas that can be implemented regardless of the disability of the child.
About the Author
The author has both personal experience and professional experience in working with developmentally delayed children along with two master's degrees one of which is in psychology. He, along with his wife, has raised his step daughter since she was six. She is now a twenty-five year old adult with developmental delays. He has transitioned her through several school districts in several states and seemingly countless Individual Education Plans (IEP's) and into adult work placement. His professional experience comes by running a home for physically and developmentally disabled youth contracted by the state. These personal experiences along with an academic background including two master's degrees gives him a two-pronged unique perspective including a personal as well as an academic/professional perspective.
