 The children's verse "April Showers bring May flowers" sets the theme for this month's fun ideas. For many families spring does bring unpredictable weather with some warm days and some cold days, rain and sometimes snow. When it is too cold to go outside kids can make a rainbow with spray bottles or bend water with a balloon. When the weather is warm outside they can set up a sprinkler obstacle course that will water the yard and provide a lot of fun.    Spray Bottle Rainbow     Items Needed     4 spray bottles — you can reuse bottles such as Windex   4 different colors of powdered paint   Large paper   Easel   Tablespoon     Fill each bottle ¾ of the way with warm water.   Add 1 tablespoon of powdered paint to each bottle.   Shake well until all of the paint is dissolved — add more paint as desired but make sure it all dissolves, or it will clog the spray bottle.   Hang a large piece of paper (flip chart paper works great) on the easel.   Allow each child to create a piece of art by spraying the colored water onto the paper.   Allow the paper to dry.    It is a good idea to put an old towel under the easel to catch drips of the colored water or...

This month's ideas include indoor rainbow art with spray bottles, static electricity experiments, and outdoor sprinkler obstacle courses.

April Showers

This month's ideas include indoor rainbow art with spray bottles, static electricity experiments, and outdoor sprinkler obstacle courses.

Your daughter comes home from school and falls apart, not because anything happened, but because nothing did. She held it together for six hours: made eye contact when it was expected, laughed at the right moments, copied how the other girls stood at recess. Then she gets in the car and the effort runs out. That gap, calm and compliant at school, undone at home, is the clearest sign of masking in girls with Asperger syndrome. It's also the reason so many go undiagnosed until adolescence or later. What Masking Looks Like. Masking is not lying and it is not manipulation. It's a set of techniques, usually built without anyone teaching them, to look like an easier social fit than the wiring underneath allows. In practice, it shows up as rehearsing a conversation in the car before walking into school, copying a friend's tone of voice or exact phrases rather than generating original ones, forcing eye contact that feels like static instead of connection, and holding in a stim, hand-flapping, rocking, chewing on a sleeve, until she's alone in her room or a bathroom stall. None of this is visible to a teacher scanning a classroom for a child who looks disruptive, because classroom screening itself skews toward how boys with autism tend to present: visible stimming, blunt social missteps, meltdowns in the room instead of after it. A girl running a constant background process to look unremarkable reads as a well-adjusted, maybe shy, kid. She is working harder than...

Why girls with Asperger syndrome hide their traits at school, and what the school-home behavior gap signals.

Masking Behavior in Girls with Asperger Syndrome

Your daughter comes home from school and falls apart, not because anything happened, but because nothing did. She held it together for six hours: made eye contact when it was expected, laughed at the right moments, copied how the other girls stood at recess. Then she gets in the car and the effort runs out. That gap, calm and compliant at school, undone at home, is the clearest sign of masking in girls with Asperger syndrome. It's also the reason so many go undiagnosed until adolescence or later. What Masking Looks Like. Masking is not lying and it is not manipulation. It's a set of techniques, usually built without anyone teaching them, to look like an easier social fit than the wiring underneath allows. In practice, it shows up as rehearsing a conversation in the car before walking into school, copying a friend's tone of voice or exact phrases rather than generating original ones, forcing eye contact that feels like static instead of connection, and holding in a stim, hand-flapping, rocking, chewing on a sleeve, until she's alone in her room or a bathroom stall. None of this is visible to a teacher scanning a classroom for a child who looks disruptive, because classroom screening itself skews toward how boys with autism tend to present: visible stimming, blunt social missteps, meltdowns in the room instead of after it. A girl running a constant background process to look unremarkable reads as a well-adjusted, maybe shy, kid. She is working harder than...

Your child's physical therapist recommended a standing frame. You nodded, took the paperwork, and walked out to the parking lot with one question stuck in your head: if my child isn't going to walk, why does standing matter? It's a fair question. Standing programs for children with cerebral palsy who aren't ambulatory can feel like false hope wrapped in medical jargon. But the benefits have nothing to do with walking, and everything to do with what happens inside the body when a child bears weight. What a Standing Frame Does. A standing frame is positioning equipment that supports a child in an upright, weight-bearing position. Some models are static. Others allow dynamic movement or can be adjusted from sitting to standing. The frame holds the child's trunk, hips, knees, and ankles in alignment so they can bear weight through their legs without falling. The goal isn't gait training. It's therapeutic positioning that creates mechanical load on bones, opens the hip joint angle, and shifts the relationship between gravity and the digestive system. Bone Density Develops Under Load. This is one piece of information I want parents to have before they need it, not after a fracture. Children with CP who don't walk have significantly lower bone mineral density than their ambulatory peers. Weight-bearing triggers the cellular process that builds bone, and without it, bones stay thinner and more fragile: vulnerable to fractures during transfers, during falls, sometimes without any obvious cause. A 2019 study in Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology...

Why standing programs improve bone density, hip development, and digestion even when walking isn't the goal.

Standing Frames for Children with Cerebral Palsy: Medical Benefits Beyond Walking

Your child's physical therapist recommended a standing frame. You nodded, took the paperwork, and walked out to the parking lot with one question stuck in your head: if my child isn't going to walk, why does standing matter? It's a fair question. Standing programs for children with cerebral palsy who aren't ambulatory can feel like false hope wrapped in medical jargon. But the benefits have nothing to do with walking, and everything to do with what happens inside the body when a child bears weight. What a Standing Frame Does. A standing frame is positioning equipment that supports a child in an upright, weight-bearing position. Some models are static. Others allow dynamic movement or can be adjusted from sitting to standing. The frame holds the child's trunk, hips, knees, and ankles in alignment so they can bear weight through their legs without falling. The goal isn't gait training. It's therapeutic positioning that creates mechanical load on bones, opens the hip joint angle, and shifts the relationship between gravity and the digestive system. Bone Density Develops Under Load. This is one piece of information I want parents to have before they need it, not after a fracture. Children with CP who don't walk have significantly lower bone mineral density than their ambulatory peers. Weight-bearing triggers the cellular process that builds bone, and without it, bones stay thinner and more fragile: vulnerable to fractures during transfers, during falls, sometimes without any obvious cause. A 2019 study in Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology...

Your child's IEP was written in September. By January, they can't hold a pencil for more than five minutes. By March, the classroom that worked in the fall isn't accessible anymore. The IEP team reconvenes in a crisis, again, because the plan didn't account for what you already knew was coming. This is the problem with static IEPs for progressive conditions. A child with muscular dystrophy, spinal muscular atrophy, or Friedreich's ataxia doesn't have needs that hold steady year to year. Physical abilities decline. Academic access must not. An anticipatory IEP plans for change before it becomes urgent. It builds accommodations in early, writes trigger points that reconvene the team when function shifts, and protects your child's ability to learn while their body is changing. Here's how to write one. Why Standard IEPs Fail Children With Progressive Conditions. IEP 101: What Every Parent Needs to Know About Individualized Education Programs explains that IDEA requires annual reviews. For most disabilities, that's enough. For progressive conditions, it's not. A child with muscular dystrophy in September may have been walking independently, handwriting for short assignments, and managing stairs with a railing. By February, walking fatigues them, handwriting is illegible after two sentences, and stairs aren't safe. The IEP written in September assumed September's abilities would hold. The "present levels of academic achievement and functional performance" section is supposed to reflect current abilities. In practice, it's often copied from last year's IEP with minor edits. For a progressive condition, last year's functional description...

Write an IEP that anticipates declining physical ability in progressive conditions while protecting academic access.

Evolving IEPs for Progressive Conditions: Planning Ahead When Your Child's Needs Will Change

Your child's IEP was written in September. By January, they can't hold a pencil for more than five minutes. By March, the classroom that worked in the fall isn't accessible anymore. The IEP team reconvenes in a crisis, again, because the plan didn't account for what you already knew was coming. This is the problem with static IEPs for progressive conditions. A child with muscular dystrophy, spinal muscular atrophy, or Friedreich's ataxia doesn't have needs that hold steady year to year. Physical abilities decline. Academic access must not. An anticipatory IEP plans for change before it becomes urgent. It builds accommodations in early, writes trigger points that reconvene the team when function shifts, and protects your child's ability to learn while their body is changing. Here's how to write one. Why Standard IEPs Fail Children With Progressive Conditions.  IEP 101: What Every Parent Needs to Know About Individualized Education Programs explains that IDEA requires annual reviews. For most disabilities, that's enough. For progressive conditions, it's not. A child with muscular dystrophy in September may have been walking independently, handwriting for short assignments, and managing stairs with a railing. By February, walking fatigues them, handwriting is illegible after two sentences, and stairs aren't safe. The IEP written in September assumed September's abilities would hold. The "present levels of academic achievement and functional performance" section is supposed to reflect current abilities. In practice, it's often copied from last year's IEP with minor edits. For a progressive condition, last year's functional description...

Researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center published a study April 20, 2026 in Molecular Psychiatry that analyzed 6.14 million U.S. birth records and found that commonly prescribed medications that inhibit cholesterol synthesis were associated with a 47% higher risk of autism diagnosis. The medications include widely used antidepressants, beta-blockers, and statins. When four or more of these medications were prescribed simultaneously during pregnancy, the risk climbed to 2.33 times baseline. The findings don't mean these medications are unsafe for adults or that pregnant people should stop taking them. They identify a specific biological mechanism that warrants discussion between patients and doctors about individual risk and possible alternatives. What the Study Found. The research team analyzed birth records from the Epic Cosmos database spanning 2014 to 2023, with follow-up through December 2025. They examined 14 medications known to inhibit sterol biosynthesis, the pathway responsible for cholesterol production in the body. The medications studied were aripiprazole, atorvastatin, bupropion, buspirone, fluoxetine, haloperidol, metoprolol, nebivolol, pravastatin, propranolol, rosuvastatin, sertraline, simvastatin, and trazodone. Mothers prescribed at least one of these medications during pregnancy had a 1.47-fold higher risk of having a child later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Risk increased with each additional medication, climbing 1.33 times for every sterol-inhibiting drug co-prescribed. The pattern held across different medication classes. Whether the drug was an antidepressant, a beta-blocker, or a statin, the shared mechanism of cholesterol pathway disruption showed a consistent association with autism diagnosis. Why Cholesterol Matters for Fetal Brain Development. Cholesterol is...

UNMC study finds cholesterol-inhibiting medications during pregnancy associated with 47% higher autism risk

Common Medications Taken During Pregnancy Are Linked to Increased Autism Risk in a New Study of 6 Million Births. Here's What Families Need to Know.

Researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center published a study April 20, 2026 in Molecular Psychiatry that analyzed 6.14 million U.S. birth records and found that commonly prescribed medications that inhibit cholesterol synthesis were associated with a 47% higher risk of autism diagnosis. The medications include widely used antidepressants, beta-blockers, and statins. When four or more of these medications were prescribed simultaneously during pregnancy, the risk climbed to 2.33 times baseline. The findings don't mean these medications are unsafe for adults or that pregnant people should stop taking them. They identify a specific biological mechanism that warrants discussion between patients and doctors about individual risk and possible alternatives. What the Study Found. The research team analyzed birth records from the Epic Cosmos database spanning 2014 to 2023, with follow-up through December 2025. They examined 14 medications known to inhibit sterol biosynthesis, the pathway responsible for cholesterol production in the body. The medications studied were aripiprazole, atorvastatin, bupropion, buspirone, fluoxetine, haloperidol, metoprolol, nebivolol, pravastatin, propranolol, rosuvastatin, sertraline, simvastatin, and trazodone. Mothers prescribed at least one of these medications during pregnancy had a 1.47-fold higher risk of having a child later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Risk increased with each additional medication, climbing 1.33 times for every sterol-inhibiting drug co-prescribed. The pattern held across different medication classes. Whether the drug was an antidepressant, a beta-blocker, or a statin, the shared mechanism of cholesterol pathway disruption showed a consistent association with autism diagnosis. Why Cholesterol Matters for Fetal Brain Development. Cholesterol is...

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Special Needs
Articles

April Showers

Masking Behavior in Girls with Asperger Syndrome

Standing Frames for Children with Cerebral Palsy: Medical Benefits Beyond Walking

Evolving IEPs for Progressive Conditions: Planning Ahead When Your Child's Needs Will Change

Common Medications Taken During Pregnancy Are Linked to Increased Autism Risk in a New Study of 6 Million Births. Here's What Families Need to Know.

Find Providers Near You

Special Needs Articles

April Showers

Masking Behavior in Girls with Asperger Syndrome

Standing Frames for Children with Cerebral Palsy: Medical Benefits Beyond Walking

Evolving IEPs for Progressive Conditions: Planning Ahead When Your Child's Needs Will Change

Common Medications Taken During Pregnancy Are Linked to Increased Autism Risk in a New Study of 6 Million Births. Here's What Families Need to Know.

Find Providers Near You

Special Needs
Articles