Have you looked at this online magazine yet? Parenting Special Needs Magazine, or (PSN), has officially been around for three years now. The entire magazine is available for parents to read for free right from their website.
In general, parenting magazines are designed to give advice, tips, and inspiration to parents of infants, young children, tweens, and teens. Unfortunately, the majority of these types of magazines focus on ideas that are not exactly relevant to parents of children who have special needs. That is why it is especially nice to find a parenting magazine that is actually dedicated to issues that parents of kids who have special needs deal with.
Parenting Special Needs Magazine is the only one that I know of that is offered in an online format (and not in a printed one). It is something that parents can read, and subscribe to, for free. Your subscription will show up in email format, in your inbox, (instead of in paper format, in your mailbox). It is a bi-monthly magazine.
This year marks the third anniversary of Parenting Special Needs Magazine. The magazine covers all ages and stages of children or individuals who have special needs. It offers information that is helpful to parents, and in a “simplified” format, in order to easily fit it into your busy life.
Some of the regular features of this magazine include: “Real Life with a special needs child”, “S.O.S. Siblings Offering Support”, and “Practical Tips”. Other topics include information in special needs planning, rights, and caregiver information.
The magazine also offers downloads of helpful information, checklists, and posters. All of them are offered for free, and all are in the pdf. format. This means that you can easily print them out from your computer at home. Some of them are particularly useful at the beginning of a new school year.
There is a “PSN Teacher’s Cheat Sheet Form” that is designed for parents to fill out, and then give to their child’s teacher. This is a quick and easily referable way for the teacher to see a photo of your child, and to identify the photo with your child’s name and birthday.
There is a space for parents to fill in general information about their child. Other spaces are for more specific details about your child’s diagnosis, strengths, challenges, and the way in which your child learns best. You can list your child’s medications, allergies, and things that must be avoided. There is also a page for parents to put phone numbers and addresses.
Parents can also make use of a similar “cheat sheet” for your child’s coaches, a medication tracking form, and a progress report form. They also have a nice form that can be used by a parent to fill in the names, locations, phone numbers, and fax numbers, of all of your child’s teachers, paraprofessional aides, therapists and specialists that help your child at school.
Image by Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier on Flickr