How to Advocate for Your Child | POF34

It’s hard enough to bring a typical child into this world but what if your baby is born sick?  You are thrust into a world that is completely foreign to you full of medical jargon and often confusing and counter-intuitive information.  You want to use your intuition and protect your child but its so hard to know what you should be worried about and what is just normal for a new baby.  You can be left feeling angry, confused, lonely, ashamed, helpless, overwhelmed, scared, and lost.  What if you have an older child at home?  How do you make sure they don’t get lost in the mix?  What if your marriage is suffering because of this?  What if you need to go back to work? Through Annette Hines’ experience, she now teaches you how not to be brushed aside and advocate for your child so you are heard, taken seriously and ultimately get the best care for your child.   About Annette Hines Annette, an award-winning powerhouse advocate for the special needs community to share an important with your listeners. According to the CDC, disabilities affect 1 in 7 children. Over the past 2 decades, the number of children with chronic health conditions doubled from 12.8 percent to 26.6 percent. Not only can taking care of a child with a disability seem like an insurmountable task for a parent but making sure their child has a secure future when they are no longer there can seem daunting as well and can cause increased worry, stress and struggle. She is the author of the best-seller Butterflies and Second Chances: A Mom’s Memoir of Love and Loss, the inspiring true story of a mother’s special needs journey, and her struggle to secure the best possible life for her child in the face of bureaucratic resistance and marital crisis. It is a story of sacrifice, dedication, and the life-altering adjustments a special needs parent has to make when confronted with the unthinkable—the loss of a child. But most of all, it’s about love and an extraordinary mother-daughter relationship that flourished without words in the darkest shadows of adversity. She has spent the last two decades as a professional advocating for people with special needs through her firm, Special Needs Law Group of Massachusetts, PC and is the host of Parenting Impossible – The Special Needs Survival Podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpecialNeedsLawGroup/ Email:[email protected] Web: https://specialneedscompanies.com/.    From the Podcast: If you are struggling with a special needs child take these into consideration: Go easy on yourself – so it’s frozen pizza again tonight! Your kids are getting fed. You are the expert when it comes to your child. The expert isn’t somebody else!  You are the one who has the most information about your child from all the different areas and experts.  YOU are in the seat of authority. Communication is key. You can’t communicate through emotion, even if you are feeling so many emotions.  Be clear, concise and able to communicate the end goal – both written and orally.  Come to the table with ideas as well – don’t rely on everyone else to have the solutions. Know when you are in danger. This might be the time to get some legal support or opinion Embrace what you CAN do! For a full list of advocacy resources, go to: https://specialneeds-law.com/resources/ Thanks for listening! It means so much to me that you listened to my