Today I am introducing a new "Life Skills" digital download to add to the "Life Skills" series! If you're new here, I have dozens of digital downloads for neurodivergent families and kids in the shop. They are all free or $5 because I wanted them to be as accessible as possible. They are all based around systems that we have tried and that work in our home. I started the "Life Skills" series to help our daughter work through different skills that will help her in life with easy step by step directions so she can build good habits. Today we're tackling the skill of doing a load of laundry.

I have an exciting new download in the shop to share! If you don't know, I have dozens of downloads that range from zero to $5. I have tried really hard to make them as accessible to as many people as possible. They are specifically geared for neurodivergent families, like mine, but can also be used for the general population and I have made it my mission to make them as near affirming as possible. The new download that I have is a lost item checklist. This is something that is a struggle in my house. My autistic daughter really struggles with losing her belongings and then attempting to find them. We often deal with the emotional dis-regulation and overwhelm that comes with not being able to find the things she wants. So I made a checklist for her so that she can walk through and independently search for her missing items.

 Welcome to back to my series about navigating the special education system. Today I want to talk about the difference between IEPs and ISPs. I've previously touched on what an IEP is, so head back to that post first if you need a refresher if you need it, but I wanted to go more into depth on what an ISP is and the difference between the two.

When we lived in Argentina last year, one of the things that I started doing was a life skills to help my autistic daughter with activities of daily living. I did "taking a bath", but also made a "taking a shower" version of it as well because they require different steps. When we were in Argentina, I put it up on the wall in the bathroom so that she knew exactly what she needed to do with pictures and a checklist. In the time that we've been back she's stopped baths altogether and has struggled a little bit with the steps in the shower. So, I decided to pull the "taking a shower" download back out to help her.

Today I want to talk about the things that we do in our house to help get us through the unpredictability of summer. If you're new here, I have ADHD. I thrive on just waking up in the morning and decided then what we're going to do for the day. However, my daughter is autistic, and she does so much better on a schedule. She thrives on the structure and schedule of the school year and we even do the summer school program that our county offers because she loves the structure so much. So, I have a few free downloads that help her with the unpredictability of summer that could maybe help your little too!

I'm currently building wall to wall built-ins in my daughter’s room. She is autistic and one of her special interest is toys. She has SO many little figurines she collects and knows and plays with each of them. I'm building this so she has a place to keep all of them and we can still stay organized. I want to go over how exactly I'm organizing all the stuff to best fit her needs, so today we are going to sort, label and dejunk her room.