What a week I’ve had! My partner has been diagnosed with a serious illness and my son has been diagnosed with Asperger’s. How do I feel? Desolate. I have a hole in my chest the size of a football and stinging salt spray is assaulting the raw edges. I am exhausted and confused. I want to crawl into my bed and howl but I know that it won’t improve my situation. Rather than give in to my own feelings of grief, I have decided to use my grief to seek as many helpful resources as I can find.
I am a consumer of both Kristyn Crow’s and Kaye Sidder’s articles in Special Needs and Education. They have provided me much fodder over the last few weeks and established a base of understanding around how the Autism Spectrum Disorders affect others. For once in my life, I am normal! I am a parent struggling with the special needs of an adorable little boy. I need help and I need someone to listen to me. Gee, it felt good to say that.
In an effort to arm myself with appropriate resources to begin a new social skills program with my child I came across a resource website that I haven’t seen referred to anywhere else. I have worked as a child therapist for years and thought I knew what helpful resources were around. I had never heard of Super Duper Inc. Based in South Carolina, U.S.A, the company manufactures and retails educational tools that focus on reading, writing, listening and social skill development. They have some downright groovy tins of photo cards depicting the gamut of emotions and social inference situations.
In previous articles on Intuition, I have encouraged the development of a feeling vocabulary as a way of protecting against child sexual abuse. How ironic that I will now be using my same strategies to help my child recognize emotion in other people and respond appropriately, even if he doesn’t sensitively understand the other person. However, because my son knows that I use my resources to teach protective behaviors, I have bought up big from Super Duper.
Along with offering FREE postage to the U.S and Canada, the amazing site offers some FREE handouts for parents or teachers. For September’s web customers they have offered a 10% discount. They also run a monthly draw for a $50.00 gift certificate. All you have to do is tell them your thoughts on their products and any ideas you may have for future products. For those creative inventors who are sitting on educational toy designs or prototypes, Super Duper also accepts submissions of product ideas and if accepted, pay on either a once off or royalty arrangement.
I am glad I found this site. It was a silver lining in my heavy cloud. I hope you find it useful too.
Related Families.com articles in Mental Health:
Do you get angry with your child: I do because anger is a natural feeling,
Emotional Intelligence and Clear Communication.
Related entry from Megan’s journal: Considering the Crashing Cymbals of Sound.