On the inside I’m that way myself, but there are two things that keep it from being quite a practical reality: One is that when I was a child people were always telling me to cheer up and join in, to the degree that I developed the habit of doing so just to please them. The other is that if I didn’t join groups, my daughter and I might go for weeks without seeing anyone during the day but store clerks, and in NYC, it’s a real challenge to make friends with store clerks (in Georgia I always had my favorites). And then there’s that whole “don’t give up the habit of meeting together” thing, which in my church, means fellowship groups. But really, I’d rather have one family over at a time, because you can have a real conversation.

By the way, I often print out your various links to have some literally (not figuratively!) lightweight material in my purse when I wait at the doctors’ office, violin lessons, etc. (Lightweight because I don’t have a car.) And I like to read through old material from time to time, too, just to see if I can get more from it, have internalized it, or whether I’ve moved past needing that bit of information anymore.

I love the idea of the chicken singing.

Can’t wait to see your book.

Thus, why I started my e-mail lists. E-mail lists are a way to write in an extraverted fashion, because you are writing from the energy of others! Cool, huh? So, I use my e-mail posts as fodder to write my book. It helps.

That said, I am a huge proponent in helping others in the special needs arena feel empowered to pursue any special service needs themselves, if they desire, and assure them they can be more than qualified to provide superior assistance. Alas, I have spoken at plenty of conferences on this and too many still rely heavily on school or professionals in this “lack of” mentality for which you speak. So, I do know what you talk about and cringe more often than not. However, the good news is that just like in the educational arena and those homeschoolers who preceded us as trailblazers in letting us know there are better ways available, so it is true also in the special services arena. We who travel this path today as our own researchers, trainers, and creators can attest there are better ways available.

Try to count my enthusiasm as confidence versus pride. One has to be thus to counter the traditional special needs culture of today . . .

-Cindy

The idea of the “helping witness” dovetails with what I learned in the substance abuse/violence prevention field. We were focusing on “at risk” children — including kids from troubled families. Studies indicated that the one “resiliency factor” that stood out the most was the presence of some kind of positive mentor in the child’s life. I think you are correct in saying that having such a person can prevent someone from integrating negative experiences into ones identity.

Egads … how many well-meaning parents have been misled by “experts” like Schreber? :-(

and I think the point where you disagree is about means. We can agree that we need to break that cycle and disagree about means — individual, social, state.