As a member of the 40 percent—that is, the parent of a child on the special education side of an Integrated Co-Teaching (ICT) class—I’ve often wondered what the other “half” (the 60 percent) thinks about these inclusion classes.  For those not in the know, ICT classes (formerly known as CTT, Collaborative Team Teaching) have a 40 to 60 percent ratio of children with special needs. These classes have a general education teacher and a special education teacher who jointly provide instruction to both students with and without disabilities (the 40 percent have IEPs, Individualized Education …

Like a watched pot that refuses to boil, an RSA won’t materialize until you’ve abandoned all hope that it ever will. For the uninitiated, an RSA is a Related Services Authorization, essentially a slip of paper that gives a parent the official nod to have a state-approved therapist begin sessions with his or her special-needs child. An RSA can be issued for several reasons; we’re waiting for one because Jack’s school is unable to fulfill his mandate of three weekly OT (occupational therapy) sessions. Since they can only accommodate one per week we are entitled to receive the other two outside …

When I first heard there was another child in my son’s school who wore the same ankle-foot brace as he does, I was excited. 'Yippee,' I thought. He won’t feel so singled-out now, and all I have to do is get them to be friends. An even sweeter fact is that they are in the same grade, just different classes. Soon enough I found out they have the exact same diagnosis, hemiparesis, but on opposite sides of their bodies. Jack wears his brace on his left leg and his classmate wears hers on her right. They are mirror images of each other. Poetry in motion, perhaps? I sure think so. This all took …

I signed up for Learning Leaders this year at my son’s school. It’s a volunteer program in which adults (primarily parents) offer classroom-based support in literacy, writing and math. I found out about the program through an email from the parent coordinator at PS 58, where Jack just completed kindergarten. Having gone freelance a couple year’s ago, this was precisely the kind of thing I was looking to do now that my time was my own. The clincher for me was the documented research that said children of parents who are Learning Leaders fare better in school. The connection was clear to me; a …

Consistency. It’s good for cake batter. Apparently it’s good for kids, too. Bedtime routines. Potty training. Family dinners. As parents, these are the structures we impose in an effort to provide a stable home environment for our children. I’ve tried to internalize the concept of consistency, but I certainly don’t strive for perfection. I do notice, however, that when the exceptions start to outweigh the rule, Jack’s behavior can become tsunami-like. Not pleasant, no siree. So yes, I know all about consistency, but somehow I was caught unaware when I read Jack’s year-end progress report in …

Every year I get excited for the Changing of the Garb. You know, that yearly ritual in which I put away my winter wardrobe and exchange it for shorts, tanks and sandals. But not this year. As early as February, I was already anticipating it with dread. This year was to be the first time Jack would be wearing his ankle-foot orthosis (AFO) with shorts. He only started wearing it in November, thus it’s always been covered by long pants. Now Jack’s brace would be exposed for all to see and I wasn’t sure how he would feel about it; I wanted to be prepared for whatever his reaction might be.   So I…

I recently met a gentleman at a literary reading at the East Village bar KGB, hosted by a mutual friend. We got to talking and the heartbreaking circumstances of his home life slowly seeped out. His wife of 25 years suffered a stroke two years ago. A once-successful costume designer for Broadway shows, she can no longer work. There are many other things she cannot do anymore, at least not without major assistance: walk, bathe, eat, dress, go to the bathroom. “I went from being her husband to being her caretaker,” he told me. He also told me that she finds life so unbearable she wants to die…

When Jack took off his wrist splint the other day, there was a tiny blister on the fleshy web between his thumb and index finger. In the six months since he began wearing his Super Splint, this was the first sign of irritation. “He’s probably outgrown it,” my husband Tom said. “In just six months?” I asked, remembering what a procedure it was to get an appointment, have him fitted for it and get reimbursed by insurance. “Sure. Think about it,” he said. “He’s six years old, he’s growing every day.” “Yeah,” I said wistfully. My little boy is growing up so fast. Tom soon sent an e-mail to the …

“Discipline” is the party pooper part of being a parent. Who wants to do it? Nobody. Who has to do it? Any parent who doesn’t want their kids to become socially inept adults. It’s the rare mom or dad who hasn’t heard of the time-out method of discipline in which a parent or other authority figure removes a child from a situation where he or she is misbehaving. The child is then placed elsewhere for a set amount of time; the corner is a popular spot, which makes me think of dunce caps, which makes me think of Charles Dickens, which brings visions of hollow-cheeked children with big eyes asking…

Brooklyn kids don’t often get the chance to take the schoolbus, as most live within walking (or subway) distance of their school. But many kids with special needs ride schoolbuses because the schools they end up at aren’t always nearby. My son has been taking a schoolbus since preschool; kindergarten is now year three. A transportation buff, he’s taken to it like a duck to water. He also gets to listen to the morning traffic report on the bus radio, a high point of his day. I was never worried, and still am not, about him being on the bus. There are always two adults onboard, the driver and …

Last month my husband and I introduced our 5-year-old son Jack to his new "Jets Championship Brace." That’s his AFO (Ankle-Foot Orthosis), which is a custom-molded foot brace with a Jets logo emblazoned above the heel. He also started wearing Super Splint, known to regular folks as a pediatric wrist splint. Both have been bestowed with such exciting names so as to imbue them with coolness. So far it’s working: he wears them both every day without so much as a whimper. I hope I’m not jinxing myself here. Because of his hemiparesis — significant weakness on the left side of his body — Jack …

The special needs world can feel a bit insular at times. Like many institutions, it has its own alphabet soup of acronyms: Early Intervention contracts to EI; Committee on Special Education to CSE; Individual Education Plan to IEP and the list goes on. And on.   A perfectly legitimate sentence from me a few years ago might have been, "My son gets 2x30 OT and 3x30 PT through EI at TLC." To some people, that makes perfect sense. For the rest of you, let me translate: "My son gets two 30-minute sessions of occupational therapy and three 30-minute sessions of physical therapy every week through …

Like yours, my child is special. Just ask his dad, or his grandparents. They think he's extraordinary. Like when he offers up alternate subway routes to people upon their arrival at our house. Or when I realized he knew how to read at age three when he sounded out the words, "Mean People Suck," from a sticker in the window of Café Regular on 11th Street. Yep, I think he's special. Extra special, in fact. But my child, you see, is also a "special needs" child, according to his classification from the Board of Education. A kindergartner in a local Brooklyn public school, my son receives both…