PART 1 OF 2 For many years people have debated which fighting style is superior. Boxers argued they would knock out wrestlers. Wrestlers claimed they’d defeat boxers after bringing the fight to the ground. Karate practitioners, kickboxers, tae...
Read More
Tall and slender with a wide smile, brown hair and pale blue eyes, Connor is a movie-star-handsome seventeen-year-old high school junior that girls his age would typically want to date. Because Connor has Cerebral Palsy, cannot walk, and uses a...
Read More
PART 2 OF 2 During my next visit to Charleston the following December, I was once again contracted by Lindsay’s parents to help their daughter with a new project. Her parents reported that she was still working well with Carly at The...
Read More PART 1 OF 2 Due to the flexibility of my job and my wife’s work—combined with our desire to travel and embark upon new adventures—I was able to build a small caseload of students in Charleston, South Carolina each winter. During my...
Read More
Classified with intellectual disabilities, Benson (not his real name) was a friendly fourteen-year-old with an engaging smile and an easy personality. I first met Benson when his mother called me after she read a newspaper article about my work...
Read More NOTE: The names of all students have been changed SHANNON– After acting part-time for seven years on the hit TV show Sesame Street, when Shannon turned thirteen she was told by producers that she was no longer the adorable little kid with...
Read More A sixteen-year-old high school junior, Ralphie (not his real name) has Down syndrome, autism, and is deaf in one ear. He is four-feet-ten-inches tall and, like many young men with Down syndrome, is stocky. He has a difficult time expressing...
Read More
While at dinner with a group of friends one evening, enjoying a light and convivial conversation, a buddy of mine began prattling on about how hard his job is as a pharmaceutical salesman for a multibillion dollar global drug company. He...
Read More Society often has unreasonably low expectations of youth with disabilities and a propensity to stereotype. In fact, there’s a prevailing and widespread belief that kids with disabilities pretty much have four career options: 1) Bag...
Read More As a society we’ve come a long way since the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990. Yet even in this age of disabilities enlightenment, there are still many who remain in the dark when it comes to society recognizing the...
Read More
ABLED or DISABLED? You decide… A man was born with Cerebral Palsy. A man became afflicted with an ALS-like (Lou Gehrig’s disease) motor neuron disease, rendering him speechless and without use of his limbs, confining him to a...
Read More
It’s rare to see a suburban fourteen-year-old working these days. The times have changed and priorities have shifted along with the times. A combination of unmotivated and/or overindulged youth coupled with protective parents keeps too many...
Read More