Parenting an Adult with Disabilities or Special Needs Receives Award

I am so honored that Radical Parenting found my book to be one of the 50 best parenting books.

Until next time,

Peggy Lou Morgan
for a complete list of my sites www.peggyloumorgan.com

Big Shoes (Paws) to Fill - New Service Dog

It is not clear to me what the various feeds pick up. I know that my Amazon blog is not picking up the video but I'm not sure about these pictures. If you can't see the pictures just click on the link to the blog it's from and it will take you to where you can see the pictures.

This is Tonka (yellow lab, named because he is the biggest and most fun of the litter), who is 9 weeks old. He is going to become Billy Ray's service dog when he is about six months old. We are going to visit him this weekend.

This time we are going to do things a little different because of Billy Ray's health and my schedule. The breeder (whose name and contact information I will reveal when she is ready for that) is going to do more of the basic training before I start working with Billy Ray and Tonka at about six months old. As I have been taking notes and talking to the breeder about what is important in terms of training, I have been thinking about what Billy Ray (and all of us) has gained from his dogs and what we have learned.

Dogs have been important to Billy Ray. His first experience with a dog was in foster care before we adopted him at 15 months old. He was a little much for my older poodle on placement so the veterinarian selected five month old Katie for him.

Together Katie and Billy Ray, then about 4 years old, went through basic dog obedience training and he learned how to handle her pretty well. He had her from the time she was 5 months old until about 14 years old. She was a pet not a service dog but she made a real difference in his life.

As Katie was aging, I began to look at a replacement. I looked into the idea of a service dog but couldn't find appropriate trainers. Somehow I found Dana PawsAbilities in northern Washington state. Her organization is primarily obedience training not a service dog trainer but she took time on the phone to give me tips for making it work. I remember the first thing she advised me to figure out was what jobs the dog would be expected to do for Billy Ray. I don't know why Dana didn't get impatient with me given it wouldn't benefit her business but she was always helpful.

Thanks to Dana's help and Carolyn Jones, 4-H leader and friend, who found us what was to become the perfect service dog for Billy Ray, we had several good years with Sheba. We took Sheba almost everywhere with Billy Ray. His support staff took her with him to his school program and other activities. The picture below is my favorite - he is shredding papers at Silver Falls School District Office and she is right there comforting him.

Unfortunately, Sheba, while perfect for Billy Ray had one flaw, she loved to chase cars along our fence when they drove onto the neighbors property. She injured her leg. We treated it for a long time and it was felt that surgery wouldn't help. Eventually she couldn't work with Billy Ray but remained a pet until there was nothing else that could be done to keep her comfortable and we put her down.

Enter Penny Lane who was in foster care with Heartland Weim Rescue and we heard about her through our friends Cliff and Shela Nielsen . Through a chain of events and the fact we had a friend's son coming home from college in Olathe, KS and could transport her Penny Lane came to be Billy Ray's next service dog. She was the dog no one wanted and was at risk of being put down because she had problems with her ears and was partially deaf. I had provided similar care to Katie when she had problems with her ears so was not frightened away from Penny Lane. However, what I didn't realize was that Katie was well trained before her ears became and issue and we needed to provide more extensive training to Penny Lane because she was a service dog whereas Katie had been a pet. Training for Penny Lane has not been very successful and she has become much more of a pet than a service dog.

However, Penny Lane has contributed to Billy Ray and to me in ways I could have never trained her to do. We got her about a year before Billy Ray had the health crisis and ventilator episode shared previously. When he began go through breathing changes which have never been thoroughly diagnosed but he appears to literally stop breathing and Penny Lane somehow senses it and comes to get me. I can sleep because I trust her to monitor it. I wrote about it here .

Below is a picture that shows the relationship between the two. He doesn't really want her to sleep on the bed because she lays on the covers and he can turn over as well. However, this one morning he was dressed and went back to bed and crawled up beside him on his other pillow. He covered her up and fortunately this was one of those Kodak momemts I didn't miss.

As a rescue dog her exact age was a guess. It was suggested that she might be 2 years old but our vets have suggested she was probably 4-5 years old when we got her nearly 5 years ago. She has had multiple health issues the entire time but she has been manageable. Her weight has been a constant struggle and it was just believed that Billy Ray gave her too many bites (which he does) but it was finally discovered that she has a thyroid problem and we have been treating that. However, recent tests performed show that she has liver issues as well. She is being treated for both and is on a special diet for the liver issues. Her vet advised that we would probably be able to maintain her another year but two years was stretching it.

Thus, it seemed time to consider a new service dog. There are now service dog agencies that we could work with but because it is used a specific way for Billy Ray and I want to work with it myself, we are going through a breeder we know. I hope to share on pictures and video blogging when we get started training.

Until next time,

Peggy Lou Morgan

for a complete list of my blogs and sites see http://www.peggyloumorgan.com/

Preserving the Parents' Expertise

Part of a question from an interview I did recently has haunted me. It suggested that some might feel transition planning was letting go in the sense of giving up on an adult. I decided to chat with you in a video blog today about that. I am pasting the video below. Depending on what feed you are reading this post on it may not come through. If not, go to my video blog page here .



Until next time,

Peggy Lou Morgan
For a complete list of my sites see www.peggyloumorgan.com

Our Latest News 4/6/09

Hi Everyone:


There is a lot going on right now and I have wanted to touch bases with you for a while.

First, Billy Ray is somewhat the same as when I last posted. He still fights chronic pancreatitis but we are learning to anticipate pain and catch it as early as possible so he doesn't need the stronger medications for pain. The surgery (Nissan) done in September 2006 which sort of fixed his high degree of acid reflex was checked last week and still in place but he is getting reflux again and it is the cause of periodic choking episodes.

He has good news and bad on the service dog front. The present service dog is experiencing health problems of her own and will have to be replaced within the next year. I have ordered a Yellow Lab puppy which he will get at the end of summer and we will start training her to work with him.


Parenting an Adult with Disabilities or Special Needs seems to be getting pretty good reviews already. I am truly pleased by them. Here are two: Autism Learning Felt and Specialchildrenabout.com .

Thanks to Amazon, I am able to combine the feeds for my blogs in one. If you'd like to read all the recent posts for this blog and Parenting a Complex Adult you can go to the Amazon blog and get them in one location.

Until next time,
Peggy Lou Morgan
http://www.peggyloumorgan.com/ for a complete list of sites

Joe Steffy, a Success Story

The story of Joe Steffy, who experiences the combination diagnosis of Down syndrome and Autism, is small business owner (Poppin Joe's Kettle Korn). See the full story here .



It is the classic example of what parents working with their adult child can accomplish. The parents did not believe the school district's assessment that Joe would never be able to be independent. Together they ascertained a future that would work for him, set about writing a business plan and getting a small grant.



I was anxious to share these links with my readers because it will encourage us all relative to what is possible for our own children and adult children.



By the way, I have just added the feed for this blog and Parenting a Complex Special Needs Child to my Amazon Blog so that you can read both at the same there.



Until Next Time,

Peggy Lou Morgan

For list of sites see http://www.peggyloumorgan.com/

Your Adult Child's Pursuit of Happiness - Who Will Design

Everyone seems to have an opinion about what will make your son or daughter happy in adult life. Unfortunately, some of it is based on what is most prudent for programs not on person centered planning.

Whether he is high functioning and can learn to self advocate or needs a more involved advocate he has a right to be totally involved in choosing a future that will make him happiest. You can help him on the journey to pursue what will be a happy life but he needs to be as involved in those choices as possible.

If at all possible start taking your younger child to I.E.P.'s so she starts to learn advocating from you and to have as much understanding of oppportunities for the future as possible.

In Parenting an Adult with Disabilities or Special Needs, I have included some exercises you could try together to help him demonstrate interest in specific plans. Hopefully, it will be helpful in jumpstarting the conversations between you.

Until next time,
Peggy Lou Morgan
for a list of my sites see www.peggyloumorgan.com

Communication by Behavior (Reading the Signs) Revisited

This post is revisiting a topic I have covered several times in different ways since the beginning of this blog in 2005. It seems important to touch on it again because several parents have emailed about their frustration relative to their child’s behavior. A common line is “we are held captive to his behavior” or “it is impossible to plan anything because we never know she will respond”. Many want to know what medications Billy Ray takes or what medications will treat behavior problems with their child.

I am not anti medication but we use the very minimum necessary. I have found over the past 24 years of being Billy Ray’s Mom (he was adopted at 15 months old) that medication is a last resort for behavior issues. What works for us is reading the signs relative to his behavior. Two posts on this topic are Change is Coming – Reading Your Child’s Behavior and Reading Signs in my Complex Son. There are many others under the label Communication by Behavior.

When you allow your child to show you what he needs to feel safe and comfortable and adapt his environment, schedule, etc., etc. as close as possible to his comfort level life becomes much more comfortable for him and for the whole family.

Some have written that it is not fair for one member of the family to have things his way. I do understand that feeling. For me, it came to a point that I learned what Billy Ray can and cannot incorporate or understands. His logics are not mine. If he is confused by an aspect of the routine or environment we can get stuck and ruin a day or even longer periods of time. By doing things the way that he can understand or accept, it changes the flow of whatever we are doing. If that means we have to do things differently than another member of the family wishes but we will not get stuck it might well be worth it, depending on the situation.

Others have written that they don’t have time for the documentation, etc. suggested in Parenting Your Complex Child. My response is that being stuck with meltdowns or behavior issues takes more time than we realize. When we learn to read the signs, adapt to the child’s needs and communicate the child as he or she is to the professionals involved, it changes family life as well as the child’s. It takes time and initially a lot more energy than we might think we can muster but in the end it saves time, energy and frustration. It is really a choice of how you will spend your energy and that of your child and how much frustration you can cope with.

As aside, I am not keeping the blogs up the way I want, slower to answer email and moderate comments because I am getting more email and comments these days. I have decided that is partly my fault because many of the things I would respond is already on the blogs but hard to find because it has been archived by date. I changed the blog template today and am in the process of labeling every old post by categories. If you have any suggestions or comments please let me know.

Until next time,

Peggy Lou Morgan
For a list of my blogs and websites see http://www.peggyloumorgan.com/