The Special Parent | Special People Parenting Special Kids

Researchers at Columbia University’s Paul F. Lazarsfeld Center for the Social Sciences studying how children who are unique in some way are identified and developed. They are currently collecting stories from parents with children who have been identified as gifted, children who have unique artistic, scientific, or physical abilities, children on the autism spectrum, and children who have been identified as having attention disorders. After reviewing it, I thought this might be of interest to some of you.

While all children are unique, the goal of this study is to identify how children with unique developmental abilities or trajectories develop over early childhood.

Peter Bearman, Principal Investigator, Cole Professor of the Social Sciences at the Lazarsfeld Center notes

Parents have different experiences and observations of their child’s development and they have different personal resources with which they access services or programs. Parents also differ in the type and extent of their support networks and social relations. And finally, parents make different decisions when finding the right academic, extra-curricular, or other placements for their children. We would like to give parents the chance to tell their stories. Survey responses will help us understand the experiences of unique children as well as their development over time.

They are collecting stories of parents of unique children through an online, semi-structured survey: http://uniquechildstudy.org. You could help their research tremendously by  participating in their study. Your answers are not viewable to anyone until you complete the entire survey and submit it so if at any point you feel uncomfortable answering a question, you can abandon the survey. I hope you’ll take some time to go over and help this study out with your participation.

Related posts:

1. Caregiver Study at Kennedy Krieger