Hi, I just found this website on educational consultants that I thought I’d share with you.  It is the Independent Educational Consultant Association web site (IECA) http://www.educationalconsulting.org/.   To quote them: “IECA is widely recognized as the nation’s leading professional organization for those educational placement advisors working in private practice.  For more than 30 years IECA has [...]

Hi, In doing research on Individualized Education Plans for this post, I bumped into a web site which puts out an annual tax update for Parents of Children With Learning Disabilities. The web site is Great Schools-Involved Parents, Successful Kids. This years article is at the following link http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/1187. I would recommend reading it as [...]

Note: Tax law is constantly changing. As such, it is important to consult a tax practitioner for the latest updates. If you haven’t filed your return yet, given taxes are due soon, they may recommend that you file an extension until you’ve gathered all necessary information. =========== When we placed our daughter, I can assure [...]

As all of you know, these programs can be quite expensive. As such, going through this process I was delighted to learn that at least a portion of program expenses are reimbursable by some insurance companies. With this said, depending on your circumstances and your insurance company’s requirements, if your child is not already enrolled [...]

As I develop this blog, I am reminded that there are a lot of detail that parents going through the process of placing their son/daughter in a program have to navigate through at some point. As such, I have decided to add on blogs called Practical Considerations. I think you will find that in some [...]

Depending on the program that your son or daughter went through, you may have received recommendations of books to read. Below are some of the books that we’ve collected and/or read along the way. I hope these are of use to you Books Author Notes The Highly Sensitive Person Dr. Elaine Aron The foundation of [...]

Hi all, Through a friend, I learned of an initiative called the Mother-Daughter Project (http://www.themother-daughterproject.com/index.htm). This project was started by a group of mothers of young girls (a family therapist, a HS guidance counselor, a psychiatrist, 3 teachers, a community organizer, a health professional, and an artist) coming together in 1997 to address the challenges [...]

Through my ed consultant I learned of a SF Bay Area organization called Willows in the Wind (http://www.willowsinthewind.com/home.php).  Willows in the Wind is a peer-to-peer parent support group for parents who have sent their teens to therapeutic program(s). This support is achieved through monthly face to face meetings that promote education/awareness and help prepare families [...]

For this first blog I thought I’d share a checklist I compiled to help families looking for a program for their struggling teens.   This checklist comes from my family’s personal experience going through this process.   I know that finding a program for a struggling teen is an incredibly painful place for a family to find [...]