Book Review: Dancing with Max

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It's been a while since I posted, and this book review speaks of something I have been pondering about for quite some time.  See, more than just the physical, mental, social and emotional development for my son R, just as in important, if not more for me, is his spiritual development.

I have posted before about how we go about teaching R about God.  I've also posted some previous reviews on Christian books tackling special needs parenting and ministry.  But I will confess, there have been times I wondered if anything we tell R about God and Jesus even resonate in his mind.  There have been anecdotes that frighten me, because ASD minds are so literal, that some claim that they cannot seem to grasp the concept of a God who cannot be seen, touched, or heard, that many of them just reject the concept of God altogether.

So I went looking for more books to read, hoping to find something.  And I found this upon the recommendation of Christianity Today.

Thoughts on Educating our Children

One of the most stressful things I feel that parents go through, based on my experience, is the process of placing your child in an educational setting.  And for so long here in the Philippines, there has only been one option - a brick and mortar school with a traditional system of classes, uniforms, and schedules.

Within the last 30 years though, there has been some movements on putting up alternative systems for children.  Though not as widely accepted as traditional brick and mortar schools, progressive schools, playschools, special education schools, even homeschooling have been coming out of the woodwork.  The teacher in me is extremely thrilled for this, though at the same time I am dismayed at how little options there are for parents who, like me, dislike the traditional system and want an alternative for their child.

R is getting older, and the search for progressive preschools has not been too difficult.  There are plenty, at least as far as I know within the metropolis.  But now that he's getting too big and too old for preschool, around the middle of last year we started looking for schools to place him for grade school.

And as if that task is not daunting enough for parents of neurotypical children, for children with special needs, it's even more complicated, and the options pool is even smaller.

So let me tell you how we went about it...

Book Review: Bible Promises for Parents of Children with Special Needs

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This book review is going to be a little bit different from previous ones, simply because it's not the type of book you read once, and then you leave it to move to the next one.  On the contrary, this is the type of book that you would want to keep within reach, going back to it again and again.

The story behind Bible Promises for Parents of Children with Special Needs and how it came into our hands may seem ordinary and normal, but I don't think it's a coincidence that it happened.

Book Review: Leading a Special Needs Ministry

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"No one has ever seen the wind. We've only experienced the effects and the results of the wind. And none of us have ever seen God. Just like the movement of a pinwheel makes us sure that the wind exists, we have ways to be sure that God exists."

Welcome to 2018 and to start it off for this blog, we have a new book review!

But first a story.

I had been thinking about this topic for quite a bit, ever since I had just written on teaching your child about God.  In fact, what prompted that post was a meeting I was involved in a few weeks before I wrote that particular article.

Teaching Your Special Needs Child about God

"Always pray for your child."

I've attended quite a few parenting seminars over the years, and one of the statements I've always heard from speakers of said seminars is the urgency to bring your child to the foot of the Lord's throne.

As a Christian, I do believe in answered prayers, of those petitions and praises that have been lifted up to Jesus from hearts that truly seek and love Him.  Of comfort to me is the promise that He always hears, as stated in 1 John 5:14 that "this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us".

It is of no question that my husband and I, on the day we were married, aim to raise the children that God would bless us with in the "discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4).  And that in itself is hard enough with neurotypical children.

But when we're talking about special needs children, how do we teach them as we are commanded to in the Bible?