Home > Articles, Medical, Recommendations, Resources, Special Needs News > New on childmind.org: Customizing games for your kids, spanking and mental illness, coming of age on medication

New on childmind.org: Customizing games for your kids, spanking and mental illness, coming of age on medication

July 10, 2012 Leave a comment Go to comments
THIS WEEK ON CHILDMIND.ORG
July 3, 2012
I’m pleased to tell you about a rather delightful piece on childmind.org (just in time for summer vacation) about games—how to make them work for children of different ages and abilities. It’s delightful because the writer, Michaela Searfoorce, brings such insight and humor to the role of being a mother of three kids. A passionate game-player, Michaela has customized five popular games for her brood, which includes, as she puts it, “a special needs pre-teen, a competitive 3-year-old and a copycat 20-month-old. What’s the secret? We make up our own rules.”What makes her reinvented games irresistible is her acuity in creating fun and engaging experiences for kids. My particular favorite is what she calls “Trivial Pursuit – Dinnertime Edition,” in which she writes questions on cards for each child and deploys them to energize dragging dinner table talk. “This little game has saved many a dinner alone with the kids while Ryan works late and I am out of ideas. The cards make it an ‘official game’ so they will answer anything I ask—pretty genius, right?”——

If you haven’t read her blog, thefoorce.com, I recommend that you check it out. I’m hooked on her weekly installments of conversations with James, her 11-year-old son with multiple disabilities. James is unpredictable, imaginative, perceptive, and occasionally infuriating. In one recent post from the Long Island Rail Road, his little sister points out a train yard and asks him what it is.  “It’s kind of like a nursing home for trains,” says James. “When trains stop working or when they get old they go to train yards.” Here’s another one in which Michaela captures the humor in James’s bad mood on a very rocky morning—something we all need to do on those kind of days.
 —Caroline Miller, Editorial Director
Categories: Articles, Medical, Recommendations, Resources, Special Needs News Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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