When is the last time you sat down and tried to describe the emotions you were feeling, either by saying them out loud or writing them down? 

Perhaps you keep a journal. Or perhaps you openly speak about how you feel to a spouse or a friend. Or maybe you are one to simply keep your emotions to yourself. 

As a parent of a child with special needs, the head of the nation’s premier school for children with complex challenges, an author, and a bibliophile, I often come across such books -- resources that I know can help families support their children, and that can help children become self-advocates. 

Because I am often asked for these book recommendations from friends, families, and colleagues, I’m excited to announce the start of the TQS Book Club: a series of blog posts that will introduce books, authors, and resources aimed at helping families of children with complex challenges shine. 

Back in the 1970s, a comic artist came up with the perfect visualization of someone who sits around and watches a lot of television: couch potato. The reasoning? If a person spends too much time passively watching a screen, they can become more vegetable-like than human. 

Fast-forward 50 years -- smack into the middle of a global pandemic that is keeping everyone indoors and on screens -- and the term still hits home hard. Most people have grown more sedentary, more isolated, and more attached to technology over the past year, to the point where it feels like we’re literally rooted in place. 

This time of screens and social isolation has been hard on everyone, but it is especially difficult for children with complex challenges.

Remember when you were a child and the forecast called for snow? That feeling of awesome anticipation, of excited uncertainty, about what the next day would bring? 

In those days, a change from routine was welcomed with open arms and big cheers. Today, a similar anticipation and uncertainty keeps us parents up as night for completely different reasons. 

The threat (or reality) of school closures stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic has hung over the 2020-2021 school year since it started -- and right now, as we enter the holiday season, many schools and colleges across the country are closing their doors once again and transitioning into virtual learning. 

If your child suffered from school anxiety prior to the pandemic shutdown, chances are high that this extended school break exacerbated the issue. Yet even if your child never experienced school avoidance before, the uncertainty of the past few months and the dire news cycle to which they’ve been exposed may have created new anxious feelings. 

While school anxiety and avoidance are very common, especially in children with complex challenges and learning differences, it can be both frustrating and emotional to help a child overcome these fears. 

Virtual learning is difficult -- on both children and their families. Children with complex challenges, however, suffer exponentially when learning is fully online.