Caregiving, Living Life Daily, Marriage, Special Needs Parenting
Cindi Ferrini
Ability to Bounce Back

A parent or caregiver of someone with special needs, needs the ability to bounce back. There was a time we asked each other, “What would it take (not that we want to experience it) for us to hit a breaking point?” We don’t have a list of times we thought we were close, but we do have a few stories that stick with us to help us remember not to quit when things are rough. Here are a few ways we kept mindful of the ability to bounce back.

Ability to Bounce Back
Joe and Cindi Ferrini
Learning To Love Listening

“Learning to listen isn’t a gift; it’s a skill.” “Anytime is a good time to learn to listen.”

These statements are great places to start in the month of “love” as we share cards, gifts, and time with others. It’s a skill that can be learned and we will be all the better for it. In our family, we are still learning and growing in this area both in our marriage as well as with our grown children, their spouses, the grandchildren, and our son with special needs.

Learning To Love Listening
Caregiving, Challenges, Special Needs Parenting
Jenn Soehnlin
God’s Invitation to Share Your Heart with Him

The playground was bustling with laughter and movement, but my boys, then just two and four years old, played in their own quiet way. After a speech therapy session, we stopped at a nearby park, a familiar part of our speech therapy routine when the weather was nice. My older son wandered the perimeter of the playground and discovered sweet gum balls—a spiky green fruit on the gumtree but which dries out and turns brown and drops to the ground.

God’s Invitation to Share Your Heart with Him
Caregiving, Challenges, Special Needs Parenting, Spiritual Growth
Jolene Philo
The Lessons I Learned while Raising a Child ...

The lessons I learned while raising a child with EA/TEF have been many and varied. That’s to be expected since our son was born in 1982 with esophageal atresia (EA) and a tracheoesophageal fistula (TEF), two conditions that left him unable to swallow and required immediate surgery. Many of the lessons came about as a result of the surgeries and invasive procedures he endured between birth and age 5. Other lessons came later as he became more independent in adolescence and adulthood. I encourage you to use these ten lessons as a springboard for considering what you’ve learned as well.

The Lessons I Learned while Raising a Child with EA/TEF
Caregiving, Challenges, Marriage, Medically Fragile, Special Needs Parenting
Joe and Cindi Ferrini
5 Ways to Keep Your Marriage Strong into the ...

Kingdom Focus is what first comes to mind. Those of us who are married and have someone in our life with special needs for whom we have responsibility (often 24/7 and 365!) know that without focus, we are doomed. AND for those of us who are believers in Jesus, we add to that His Kingdom focus and our part in it.

For us, we have 5 top ways to work on our marriage and keep it strong. There are more, of course, but let’s not get overloaded!

5 Ways to Keep Your Marriage Strong into the New Year!

non-verbal

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More Than Just A Parent - Part 2

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More Than Just A Parent - Part 2

Whether at the doctor’s office, with our child’s therapy team, in the classroom for an IEP meeting, many times we are just not considered experts on our children. We are relegated to being just a bystander while the real “experts” make proclamations over our children. While they may be truthful many times, they still don’t define our children totally. It is in those moments that we must step in and be the voice in the gap between the understanding of the experts and the knowing of our hearts, and speak out the value of our kids that only we can communicate as parents.

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How The Sound Of Our Autistic Son's Laughter Heals Us

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How The Sound Of Our Autistic Son's Laughter Heals Us

For us as parents of a child with additional/special needs, there are certainly many times to weep, times to be sad. But there is so much more to life than the tears and hard times. Let us celebrate the happier times, the times to laugh and dance.

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Careful, Our Children Are Watching

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Careful, Our Children Are Watching

My autistic non-verbal son has picked up some interesting habits recently. My son, who I always assumed was demonstrating illogical and repetitive behaviors due to his autism, was possibly copying what I did and trying to do the same things. He was legitimately observing my actions and trying to emulate them in the best ways he possibly could. He was watching me.

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How to Develop Prayer in Children with Little Speech

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How to Develop Prayer in Children with Little Speech

I had an ambition to teach my daughter to pray even though her spoken vocabulary was limited to a few words. I broke down the act of prayer, employed some well-known speech therapy techniques, and began helping her develop her own prayer life. Like many other skills we have worked on in the past, this took time and repetition, but my daughter learned to pray.