Child Advocate

  Yesterday I purchased an ebook called   Empowering Abilities by Jeanine Leech . It’s a very easy read and goes through the basics of special education advocacy for many different diagnoses. You can also check out   Jeanine’s Website  I am not the biggest fan of the school system, but it does exist, and advocacy is needed for kids who struggle. I was one of those kids- I struggled in school immensely. I was diagnosed as being ADHD when I was 43, and suddenly my entire life made sense. But I graduated from high school in 1996- too soon for the no child left behind act. Even with the no child left behind act, children with disabilities and differences face a lot of discrimination from teachers and school staff.  In my opinion, an ideal world would consist of every man, woman and child everywhere just following their passions and interests all day. Yes, this would lead to learning and income earning! But for now, I’d like to do a deep dive into what “would have be...

  On a 90 minute drive last week, I listened to   this episode   of the Suffer the Little Children Podcast. The host, Laine, took a break from talking about child abuse to talk about water safety. She interviewed a woman named Christi Brown who is the founder of   The Judah Brown Project . It was named after her son who died at age 3 in 2016 from an accidental drowning. Photo of Judah Brown taken from the Judah Brown project webpage linked above  Similar to car seat safety, it seems like so many recommendations have changed since I started working with children and since I had a small child. We used to swear by “floaties”! But as it turns out, floaties in pools tend to give children a false sense of security.  She talked about teaching infants as young as 6 months old “survival swimming”, which I had seen videos of before, and it gave me an anxiety attack!   Here  is an example of an infant survival swimming lesson. Please don’t try this at h...

  Two days ago, I was at a convenience store. A woman was trying to get her young child to use the restroom. The child, who looked to be about five or six years old, insisted he didn’t have to go. The mother got visibly enraged and told him, “You better go in and try right now, before I start popping!” By “popping”, she meant she was going to physically hit him if he didn’t go to the bathroom.   The importance of listening to kids when they verbalize their bathroom needs is a topic for another day, but her statement about “Popping” was actually a threat. If anyone told you or I they’d physically hit us if we didn’t have to go to the bathroom, we could press charges for threatening. Threatening a child is a  Textbook form of emotional abuse 

  I just wanted to throw this out there. I see stuff like this online and in real life all the time. Talking about your children “ruining” things, “ruining” your life, “ruining” events, your finances, your career, your body, etc is damaging to the kids.  You are the person that your child loves the most, and if they think they ruined you, that’s devastating to them. This particular content creator has clarified that it was a joke when they said this, but if a child sees or hears them saying this, they might not have the capacity yet to understand a joke. They mentioned in the comments that anyone who had a problem with this must be a perfect parent. I say, no not at all. Just conscious of how our words affect our kids

  Recently, one of my favorite YouTubers, Hannah Alonzo, switched the theme of her channel from anti-MLM content to anti-influencer content. I honestly like the anti-MLM content better. I’ve had my own “semi-horror stories”, which I haven’t emailed to her yet. She is way behind on those emails.   Her anti-influencer content only drew me to follow specific influencers that she featured on the series. One in particular is Nara Smith. I had never heard of Nara before Hannah started bashing her and now I absolutely love Nara’s content.  Then, Hannah did  this video  on unschooling influencers.  I’m a huge fan of unschooling, even though I was never an unschooling mom. I had to put my only child in school because I had to work, and my daughter is right for the school system anyway. She would choose to go to school if she actually had a choice. Actually, her dad, stepmom and I did give her a few options to do her senior year at home, but she still chose to go. Sh...

  Earlier, I shared in this post several podcasts I listen to. Since then, I’ve discovered another one. It’s called   By Their Side: Advocating for Children in Foster Care .   I recently listened to the latest episode, featuring  Maryann McEvoy . I loved this episode. The main takeaway for me was to fight off any self doubt- and God knows I’ve had a lot of that over the years!! Maryann McEvoy seems to have achieved a pinnacle in her career that, 25 years ago, I thought I wanted to achieve as well. Maybe I still will. I will never go back to school for an advanced degree, though. I am done, and I have a four year bachelors.  Here  is a link to Maryann’s job description. Thanks for all you do, Ms. McEvoy!