Parental Needs for Transition Planning

[MUSIC PLAYING] Some of the greatest resources we've found have been in the schools because we're following a path that many others have blazed, if you will, before us. And so we're learning a lot, not just from the teachers and especially the practitioners, but the principals, other parents. So it's a great resource and that's where we're finding a lot of our answers. It's hard to know how to advise others because the journey seems so unique. We have Thomas's needs. We have the inputs we get from the people that we have. And we filter those as best we can and put them to work where they seem to make sense. We have the other children that we're also trying to raise. So there's not a single path. There's not a magic bullet. It's constantly changing and evolving. But with regard to planning, I think the thing that is important is that you do so. You do sit down. You do learn as much as possible. You talk to everyone. I will add that I think building a network of people who have children with special needs is so critical because at any stage in the game, you're relying on them, they're relying on you, for information about schools, about programs, about whatever the need is that arises on a given day. It's so important to have people who you can reach out to and say, hey, how did you handle this? Who do I talk to for this? I'm on a listserv with a lot of parents of special needs children and there's a lot of great exchange of information there. We never stop learning. It's constantly finding more information. We get to plateaus and we realize that the things we had been doing don't work anymore. We have to go find something new. And that means the first stop is learning-- asking people who've been through it, asking people whose profession it is to help manage these behaviors. We're asking teachers. We're asking friends. We're asking parents. The list goes on. And I can't tell you how many things we read. Some sources turned out to be good. Some are dead ends, but that's learning.