Raising Special Kids Program

Raising Special Kids is program written specifically for parents raising children with special health care needs. Rather than limiting discussion to parents raising children with the same disability, illness or delay (like autism, heart disease, cancer, cystic fibrosis, etc.) Raising Special Kids focuses on the emotional experience of any parent facing the unfamiliar challenges of attending to a child with special needs. Using the writing “Welcome to Holland” by Emily Perl Kingsley as a map of the trip, Raising Special Kids invites parents to deepen and expand their ability to travel with their child. The program is informative, interactive, emotionally challenging, and practical. It is designed to strengthen the parent-child connection and the family as a whole.

Raising Special Kids

• Invites parents to reflect upon the challenges of raising a child with special health care needs.
• Normalizes the intense and sometimes conflicting feelings of raising a child with special health care needs.
• Helps parents understand their parenting style and outcomes, and suggests options for change if desired.
• Encourages parents to appreciate all that they do for their child.
• Provides specific activities that encourage a strong identification with one’s unique family.
• Identifies concrete listening skills.
• Guides parents in designing effective behavioral interventions.

Individuals or organizations can order the Parent Guidebook directly from Research Press. Using this workbook, parents reflect upon their family interactions and identify specific areas that need to be changed. Through readings, family stories, open-ended questions, and family activities, parents are encouraged to accept and manage the intense feelings that accompany raising a child with special needs. Parents work through a series of eight chapters in the Parent Guidebook, each of which takes about a week to complete.

Alternatively, organizations or agencies can purchase the program and offer it as a community based class for parents raising children with special health care needs. The program comes with 12 Parent Guidebooks, 2 Facilitator Handbooks that include lesson plans, 25 Pre/posttests, participation in our research project, and 25 Certificates of completion. We recommend that the class use three training videos (sold separately), although these are not required. We also provide a list of selections from popular commercial films.

Excerpt from the Introduction to the Parent Guidebook to Raising Special Kids

Welcome to Raising Special Kids! Congratulations for your courage to embark on this journey with us. You and other parents who share the experience of raising a child or children with special needs are required to do things that other parents do not have to do. Whether this is making frequent appointments with doctors or spending countless days in the hospital, whether it is waiting for yet another psychological report or learning how to use the latest equipment for physical or occupational therapy, you are now involved in a whole new set of activities with your child. Your responses to these events and demands may be familiar, puzzling, or disturbing. Whatever your unique experiences are, they are now part of what it means for you to be a parent.

If your child has or is at risk for a chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional condition, this Parent Guidebook is written for you. Working with this material will, we hope, encourage you to become a conscious parent. For some, entering this process may initially be scary, sad, or lonely. We believe, however, the venture will be worth your time and energy, and we are confident that you will feel less alone and less afraid if you continue with this program. We hope that your choice to participate will enrich your life and help your family become more open and honest with one another. As you engage in this program, we hope you will learn new ways to appreciate all that you are doing to raise not only your child with special needs but all of your children. The challenges are many; the rewards are great.

To begin your journey, take an inventory of your life as a parent. What does it mean to be a parent of your particular child with special health care needs?

1. What is the special need that your child has been diagnosed with?
2. List how this affects your job as a parent. Be specific. For example, how do your child's medical appointments impact your life? Do your family activities revolve around the needs of your child? Does your family have frequent care providers in your home?
3. What is most difficult for you?
4. What concerns you about how these difficulties may be affecting your child's emotional or social development?
5. What concerns do you have about the ways your child’s special needs may be affecting your other children, or the relationship between you and your parenting partner?
6. What “gifts” have you received from having a child with special health care needs?

Excerpt from the Facilitator Handbook to Raising Special Kids

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments   v
Implementing the Program   1

Overview    1
Program Methods   3
Your Role as a Facilitator   5
Group Process   7
Organization of Parents’ and Children’s Groups     8
Supplemental Resources     11
Using Art Activities     11
Using Interactive Family Activities     13
Group Guidelines     14
Pretest-Posttest, Program Evaluation and Certificate of
    Attendance     14

Session Plans

Chapter 1    Becoming a Parent    19
Chapter 2    Listening to Ourselves     25
Chapter 3    Listening to Our Children     29
Chapter 4    How Do We Heal? Is it OK to Cry?    31
Chapter 5    Understanding Our Children     35
Chapter 6    Empowering Ourselves and Our Children     39
Chapter 7    Celebrating Our Children     43
Chapter 8    Being a Conscious Parent     45

Appendixes

A     Pretest-Posttest     51
B     Program Evaluation     54
C     Certificate of Attendance     55

Resources     57
About the Authors     61

Pre/post test and Research Project

Agencies and other organizations that purchase Raising Special Kids are eligible to participate in an ongoing research project to determine the effectiveness of the Raising Special Kids program. InterActive Family Resources, PLLC provides specific instructions and compiles data that compares your parents with others who have taken the class in different communities. Information is also available on the pre- and post-test results of the parents in your group.

We have established the following goals for the Raising Special Kids program; we measure these through the pre-/posttest.

• Improved connections with other families raising children with special needs.
• Increased understanding of the emotional experience of parents raising children with special needs.
• Increased awareness and understanding of the unique challenges of raising a child with special needs.
• Improved family communication and the development of skills that help children reach optimal potential.
• Increased general parenting satisfaction.

The tentative results of the research project suggest that the program has a positive and measurable effect on participants’ reported perceptions of and experiences with raising children with special needs. Comparisons of attitudinal and behavioral indicators taken before and after the eight week program show an overall improvement in four of the five specific goals of the program. The sample for the evaluations is currently too small to calculate statistical significance, but consistently higher scores in posttest results clearly show the effectiveness of the program.