Tag Archives: Military Schools

Special Parents Confidential 60 Military Families

Military Families.

This episode of Special Parents Confidential is devoted to Military Families with special needs kids. Parents of children with special needs know first hand how challenging any situation can be from starting school, to getting the kinds of medical and therapeutic help their kids need, to just social life in general. Now add to that situation that every year or two you and your family might get uprooted and moved to another State, or even overseas. That’s the life for military families with a special needs child. Can you still get the same services in your next location that you were able to get for your child where you currently reside? What about Medical needs? Language problems? Education supports? Therapies?

Okinawa, Hawaii, Virginia…

Our guest for this episode, Catherine Lochner, has a lot of experience in this area. Neither she or her husband were actually in the military, but the company her husband works for contracts with the military and they lived on bases with other military families, as part of his career requirements. Their son, Cameron, was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor in 2000, and they have had to do everything from flying across the world to get emergency surgery, to dealing with special education services in the Department of Defense’s Education system, and relocating several times while all this was going on. She now works as a special needs and special education advocate in the Commonwealth of Virginia. 

DODEA and Special Education Supports Around The World

Military families have tremendous challenges, even when everything is typical. Having a special needs child in the military is still challenging, but the Department of Defense Education Activity has some excellent supports for those parents. You’ll hear exactly what our military does for families with special needs kids and how things have improved in just the twenty some years since Catherine’s son was born.

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A great way for you to stay in touch with me and communicate your thoughts on these episodes is on the facebook page for Special Parents Confidential. Use the Facebook button on the right side of this website, or the button at the bottom of this text, or use this link. You can also search Special Parents Confidential on Facebook. It’s also a great way to share our podcast with everyone you know.

Links Mentioned In The Podcast

Military OneSource – Go-To site for 24/7 support for Military Personnel.

 Special Education Parent Handbook Curriculum – Department of Defense Education Activity

DDESS-DODEA – Department of Defense Education Activity – Americas

National Military Family Association – Resources and supports for Military Families

Also be sure to look up special needs support groups such as Parent Training Centers in your area throughout the United States, as well as your local PTA or PTO.

 

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Special Parents Confidential Episode 55 Collaborative & Proactive Solutions

Collaborative & Proactive Solutions.

In this episode we’re taking a look at Collaborative & Proactive Solutions, which was developed by Dr. Ross Greene and his Foundation, Lives In The Balance. Child behavior problems are always a concern for parents, and sometimes it can seem for parents of special needs kids that the behavior concern is a constant problem.

Punishments and Discipline Don’t Work. 

For as long as anyone can remember, the basic correction method for misbehavior was centered on punishment and discipline. However, that model often fails miserably, and we know this is true, because it’s evidenced by the fact that we have so many prisons full of the results of that failure. So why do we keep enforcing a system that doesn’t work?

Treating Causes Instead of Symptoms.

Over the past few decades a new model of behavior, called Collaborative and Proactive Solutions, or CPS, has been developed with a much greater rate of success. This model was founded by Dr. Ross Greene, who, while on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, began to take a different look at kids with behavior problems. 

Collaborative & Proactive Solutions.

From his organization’s website, Lives In The Balance: The model is based on the premise that challenging behavior occurs when the expectations being placed on a kid exceed the kid’s capacity to respond adaptively, and that some kids are lacking the skills to handle certain demands and expectations. So the emphasis of the model isn’t on kids’ challenging behavior, which is just the manner in which they are expressing the fact that there are expectations they’re having difficulty meeting. Nor does the model focus on psychiatric diagnoses, which are simply categories of challenging behaviors. Rather, the model focuses on identifying the skills the kid is lacking and the expectations he or she is having difficulty meeting.

To tell us more about how the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions model works and why it works, we’re being joined by Kim Hopkins who is the Director of Outreach for the official Collaborative and Proactive Solutions Foundation, Lives In The Balance.

Links Mentioned In The Episode

Lives In The Balance – the Official Foundation of Dr. Ross Greene

Lives In The Balance Facebook Groups 

Lives In The Balance Radio Programs

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