While at times it can feel like eating our vegetables, often we pick up a book geared toward special parents and find that, well, it's rather exceptional.
One such book (which happens to be part of our resource library collection -- available for borrowing at Second Hill Lane, where we have our meetings) is The Elephant in the Playroom: Ordinary Parents Write Intimately and Honestly About Raising Kids with Special Needs, by Denise Brodey.
I brought it along on a plane recently, along with some more fun reading, and wound up spending the entire trip with this book. I laughed. I cried. I laughed some more. The person sitting next to me was jealous of my read.
There was the essay that hit close to home about the challenges of parenting the "special one" at a birthday party. And the touching moment when another mom was crying, until she realized her challenging child was literally licking the tears off her face.
And toward the end of the book, this gem of a quote: "When you get to the point where you can embrace special needs in all of its strangeness, you know you're in a good place. That is when you know you've seen the light."
So the next time you're at a SEPTA meeting (Sept. 19 is our first - save the date!), pop over to the resource library wall at the far left and pick out a book. Even if you don't have the luxury of sitting by yourself on a plane, reading it cover to cover, reach for it on the nightstand one night. Open a random page. Flip through and find a page with a quiz or a bulleted list of suggestions (lots of our books are interactive and have plenty of white space on the page -- these authors know we are a frazzled bunch!). Read some examples of exceptional kids. You'll probably be glad you did.
And if you love what you read, tell a friend to come check out our resource library, too. Better yet, email us a short review and we'll publish it here.
