Child Rite Chair

The Child Rite chair is a larger version of the Bumbo seat that came out several years ago.
It costs a lot more than the Bumbo seat because they are not mass-produced. But for my daughter, the Child Rite chair has helped immensely in giving her a way to sit, supported, on the floor. I don't get any money from the company but I am still giving the website address because I find the seat very useful. http://www.childrite.com/

Best book for special needs parenting

The best book I ever read in my journey of the special needs world was In Time and With Love, Caring for the Special Needs Baby by Marilyn Segal, PhD.
The title alone taught me so much. Our Grace is developing but at a rate so slow you might not notice the changes if you didn't care. I read the original version and a new version has been published recently.

Play Wall

One of my most genius ideas yet. Yes, I will toot my own horn on this because this play wall has saved me hundreds of early morning hours of sleep. When I built this play wall next to Grace's bed, she found something interesting to do for a few mintues to an hour or more in the early morning hours before calling for me to come get her out of bed.

Grace moved to a big girl- double bed when she was 2&1/2. A big girl bed doesn't have rails to hang toys from so I took her crib apart, turned one of the rail sides on end and stuck it between the bed and the wall. I needed to put the egg crate foam behind the crib rails to protect the wall. I used to rotate the toys occassionally but these are Grace's favorites and they keep her content the most. The weight of the bed pushed up against the wall keeps the rails perfectly straight and they don't move at all.

Magic Wand

My daughter's favorite toy. Many people call it a magic wand. We started calling it Grace's "up-down bar" and that name stuck. We use this to play "up-down" with hands, "row, row, row your boat," twisting, "wheels on the bus," and more. Grace also holds on to it when she is doing an activity that throws off her sense of balance. When she is holding the bar, she is "in control" of the motion. If she drops the bar or lets go of the bar with 1 hand, then the motion stops. When she picks the bar back up, the motion can go again, etc. For example, we try daily spins in a swivel chair. Grace is much more comfortable with this activity if she is holding the bar. It's like her steering wheel on the chair.

Bathtub Positioning

When Grace couldn't sit up yet, bathtime was a dilemma. I had to always get in with her in the tepid- (too cold for me) bath water and try to wash her as I supported her. This bathtub has a strong plastic top ring that she could lean against as I washed her. The bottom is padded with air filled tubes and the sides are plastic. It also folds up for storage.

Balance Board

Balance Board-A recycled piece of lumber and a swimming noodle cut to size

We connected the two with screws.

Early vision stimulation

Homemade Black & White cards for early visual stimulation

I used large blank index cards. My older kids and I drew large pictures with black marker.

I laminated the cards with a home laminator. Very cheap and very effective.

This toy known as a Skwish is great for little hands that don't have much fine motor control. Grace could grab it with ease and move it from one hand to another without losing it too fast. If it fell, it wouldn't roll far and she could grab it again.

Homemade Positioning Chair

A wide range of possibilities exist for seating systems. Anything labeled "special needs" is also very expensive. Until we could find what Grace needed and what we could afford, this homemade foam chair worked great. I could always put her in this chair and know she was supported and safe. I bought the foam at a local hardware store. Foam is not cheap but it is less expensive than the positioning chair we eventually purchased. I cut the foam with an electric knife. Each layer of the foam chair was built by using spray glue (777 worked best.)