It's the holiday season, which means lots of fun things, but also a lot of schedule changes that can cause a lot of dis-regulation for the kids in your life. With that, I want to share with you the things that I always keep in my bag to help regulate my neurodivergent kids when we're out to dinner, at a holiday gathering or any other event. I like to keep these things in a separate small bag and I have one in my church bag, diaper bag and an extra so that I can put it in any other bag that I take. I also do my best to rotate things in the bag so that they don't get bored of the same items.

A while ago, I wrote a post about curating a neurodivergent home. We realized the standard way of living we were raised with or that we saw other people living simply didn't work for our family. We have come up with systems that DO work for our family. This post really resonated with a lot of people, but as time went on and our home and needs changed, I figured other people would like to see how things changed as our family and needs changed too. Here are our updated ways to make our neurodivergent home work for us.

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.