What Rachel Smalley, and the public, doesn’t understand about mainstreaming special needs children.

I aim of the belief that all children and teenagers should have the support to learn equally. My sister has Down’s syndrome and my biggest hope for her is that she won’t be made to feel differently or suffer form an misguided education system that excludes special needs children, truth be told these children will become adults both with and without learning disabilities, we should all be encouraging of a patience and respectful attitudes towards all children.

One of the most fulfilling moments I have ever experienced was watching my teenage brother come over break away from his own friends to play soccer with myself and our little sister.

All humanity starts from learning and understanding why it’s so important to make the time and considerations for those people who may need a little more help then others.

Thank you for writing this

Autism & Oughtisms

Today a reader of my blog asked if I’d read a recent article written by Rachel Smalley, up on the Newstalk ZB website. The reader was not happy about what she read there, and having read it myself I also feel the article needs a public reply. There is just so much wrong with the way Smalley frames the debate she is looking at, that it is hard to know where to start, so I might as well begin at the beginning.

Bu Via Tsuji, via Flickr

Smalley’s article starts off with the recent example of the child with Aspergers and dyslexia, who had been expelled from school because of an incident with a skateboard. She uses this example to launch into the question of whether it is a good idea to mainstream children with special needs. She uses two examples to frame the debate: One where an…

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Men women and death

Over the past week I have been thinking and comtemplating how old is too old? how young should you be when you move into your partners house?.

When should you move out of home and if I’m only in my 20’s is it okay to have mid life crisis?
I’ve honestly had mini break downs after bad break ups. What’s this all mean? Are older people so different from younger ones?.

Another point came to mind whats with men and having middle aged crisis at 39? or 34? dont men live until 90? and women die before men right? Or is it the other way around?

“Midlife crisis is a term coined in 1965 by Elliott Jaques stating a time where adults come to realize their own mortality and how much time is left in their life”.

That doesn’t include that rest of everyone else in the world that isn’t have the realization that they have a limited amount of left on this planet.

People may reassess their achievements in terms of their dreams. The result may be a desire to make significant changes in core aspects of day-to-day life or situation, such as in career, work-life balance, marriage, romantic relationships, large expenditures, or physical appearance.
So do men really die before women and if so is it at al to do with women nagging them to death? or is it a case of one day waking up looking less than impressive all piped up and pissed off at the chances they’ve missed out on whereas perhaps women deal with life’s challenges a little easier or we self medicate with yoga retreats and red wine.

It’s made me come to the conclusion that theres no real problem with getting older, its more complex then having an issue with how old you look and never becoming a professional athlete.

I think we all have moments in our lives where we answer our own questions about what we should be doing to improve ourselves. Becoming more connected to our destiny by finding God or Gods maybe starting to soul search comes at different ages.
Here’s the truth unfortunately death has a wicked sense of humor and as we age we should start to respect that more then anyone thing.

The next time someone gives me advice on my outrageous behaviour I won’t think to myself that I should claim down and shut up, no I’ll be even louder and wear my troubled 20’s badge with pride..
Live once not once lived