We are proud to announce our most recent Fea­tured Mem­ber on A Child Writes. Ki has not only been very active in A Child Writes with writ­ing her Pen­Pal reg­u­larly but has also shared in the enthu­si­asm behind our mis­sion by help­ing spread the word of our launch with fam­ily and friends. Ki sent in three cards last month for our Fea­tured Cause — Autism Aware­ness. When view­ing Ki’s cards you could tell she put a lot of thought and time in cre­at­ing them. She truly was pas­sion­ate about putting a smile on a child’s face and reach­ing out to show she cared.

Way to go Ki and keep up the good work!

For the next two weeks we will have a give­away run­ning from Cor­ner Art who has been kind to offer one entrants a chance to win a design of their choice from their com­pany! Today we kick off the Cor­ner Art give­away by telling you a bit more about the company.

Cor­ner Art began in a girls home in South Africa, the mis­sion is pretty sim­ple, “to help these girls cre­ate a craft that could be sold at mar­ket to tourists”. The paper mache crit­ters first cre­ated by the girls in South Africa never actu­ally made it to mar­ket since they loved them so much they kept them for their own rooms. Cor­ner Art was cre­ated with these girls in South Africa in mind and this com­pany donates 5% of all their prof­its to the orga­ni­za­tions listed on Cor­ner Art’s About Us page.

Cor­ner Art has offered one lucky reader the chance to pick their own design upon win­ning! Please read on for offi­cial rules to enter and deadline!

How To Enter:

Visit Cor­ner Art and have a look around. Come back here to leave a com­ment telling us what your favorite design is.

Addi­tional Entries:
(one entry per com­ment, above entry must be com­plete before addi­tional entries)

• Blog about this give­away link­ing back to A Child Writes and leave perma­link in comment
• Tweet about this give­away (only once per day) and leave perma­link to tweet in comment
• Reg­is­ter your child for a free account and leave their screen name for ver­i­fi­ca­tion in comment
• Add the ACW but­ton to your blog or web­site and leave a link to ver­ify in comment
• Fol­low A Child Writes on Twit­ter and leave your Twit­ter han­dle in comment
• Sub­scribe to the ACW Newslet­ter and leave email in comment
• Sub­scribe to ACW RSS Feed and leave email in comment
• Like A Child Writes on Face­book and leave your FB user­name in comment
• Stum­ble this blog post and leave your Stum­ble­Upon user­name in comment

*Give­away is open to all U.S. Res­i­dents 18+  Entries will be accepted until Tues­day, May 25th mid­night CST.  Any and all com­ments after that time will not be counted towards give­away entries.  Reader must leave a method of con­tact within com­ment and must respond within 24 hours of con­tact, oth­er­wise a new win­ner will be cho­sen.  Random.org will be used to select a ran­dom win­ner from com­ments on this post.

Full Dis­clo­sure: Prod­uct is being pro­vided by Corner-Art for pur­pose of give­away and will be shipped directly to the winner.

Give­away has now ended.

Con­grat­u­la­tions Linda Lans­ford for win­ning the Cor­ner Art give­away.  Thank you to every­one who entered.

A Child Writes is accept­ing cards for Mil­i­tary Appre­ci­a­tion this month and is look­ing for­ward to send­ing the cards we receive from mem­bers to Paris Cof­fee Cru­sade where the cards will then be sent out to sol­diers with bags of cof­fee. Cre­at­ing smiles on sol­diers faces while they are away from home! You can find out how to send your cards in to A Child Writes by vis­it­ing our Fea­tured Causes page.

Cof­fee Cru­sade has agreed to accept cards from our mem­bers and dis­trib­ute them. As a way to express our thanks to this won­der­ful orga­ni­za­tion we wanted to share addi­tional ways mem­bers can show their sup­port for Cof­fee Cru­sade:

• Pur­chase cof­fee to send to a par­tic­u­lar sol­dier by includ­ing their mil­i­tary address.
• Donate money to Cof­fee Cru­sade to help sup­port their efforts, you can see a donate but­ton on the lower right hand side of their website.
• Share this fea­tured cause and orga­ni­za­tion with your read­ers on your web­site and/or blog site.

Thank you for your con­tin­ued sup­port of our Fea­tured Cause, the mem­bers are what will make A Child Writes’ mis­sion flourish.

*Don’t for­get for each piece of mail sent in, you are placed into the monthly draw­ing for a grand prize and two run­ner ups. Please remem­ber to put your ACW user­name on the envelope

Today’s Par­ent Resource Arti­cle is writ­ten by Kim­ber­lee Rutan McCaf­ferty.

Farms have always held a spe­cial place in my heart. My beloved grand­fa­ther was a farmer and I spent many of my for­ma­tive years bliss­fully enjoy­ing the open air and coun­try life. As I con­sider the pos­si­bil­i­ties for my old­est son’s future I see a farm­ing life for him as well.

This is a deci­sion I’ve made not because I like free veg­eta­bles, although I do. I’ve never quite made it to eight serv­ings a day, but ingest­ing all of them in a twenty-four hour period is some­thing I aspire to achieve. I still have ambitions.

No, my son is going to live on a farm some­day because I want him to have some­thing worth­while to do as an adult, to par­tic­i­pate in a job in which he’ll take pride and sat­is­fac­tion. I also want him to reside on a farm because there is some­thing there he loves almost as much as movies on his DVD player, and cute fifth grade girls who play with him at recess.My son has a thing for horses.

Quite hon­estly, I never would have thought to try horse­back rid­ing with my six-year-old autis­tic son if it hadn’t been for a free day of lessons that Par­ents of Autis­tic Chil­dren (POAC), our local autism orga­ni­za­tion, had spon­sored. Justin has never really engaged with ani­mals, has gen­er­ally avoided them, and has even regarded my mom’s dog with sus­pi­cion. Plus, I’ve always con­sid­ered horse­back rid­ing to be an expen­sive sport, and since Justin will cost the equiv­a­lent of four neu­rotyp­i­cal chil­dren, I didn’t think the activ­ity was in the cards for us.

But on a crisp fall day this past Octo­ber my mom, son, and I drove out to what passes for farm coun­try in west­ern New Jer­sey, and decided to give our equine friends a shot with Justin. If worst came to worst, even if he hated it, at least it would kill a Saturday.

I fig­ured he’d prob­a­bly give it a try if we encour­aged him from the side­lines, and he lived up to our expec­ta­tions. He ten­ta­tively climbed up on that horse with three peo­ple flank­ing him on both sides, held on for dear life, and at each turn, regarded me with only a slight air of des­per­a­tion. Since each child only got fif­teen min­utes on an ani­mal I hoped he’d make it through his time-slot with­out either slid­ing off his pony or protest­ing vocif­er­ously, and he did. He even seemed mildly happy about the event afterwards.

When I found out the owner had a slot open on Sat­ur­day after­noons for lessons, I decided to jump on the oppor­tu­nity. I thought we’d give it a month, and if he remained this grim and declined to loosen his death grip on his horse du jour’s mane, we’d call it quits. I’ve found with Justin, you never really know if he’ll like an activ­ity unless you try it. Some­times, you have to try some­thing many, many times.

Over the last few months he’s fallen into a rhythm with Crack­er­jack, his newest host. He has relin­quished the ret­i­cence he expe­ri­enced dur­ing his first few lessons, and instead embraced an exu­ber­ance toward this activ­ity that I usu­ally only see him reserve for snack-time. On week­ends that he rides, as we pull into the sta­ble, he strains against the har­ness on his car seat that pro­tects both him and his mother from his Houdini-like abil­ity to escape, eager to be released from its con­fines so he can visit his old friend. He races inside the barn, and I have to remind him that rid­ing a horse with a full blad­der isn’t the most palat­able prospect as I lead him to the rudi­men­tary bath­room. As I do so he always glances through the large bay win­dow into the cor­ral, and his entire body shakes with excite­ment at the prospect of a ride to come.

At first this activ­ity was solely for him, but over time, it has come to have great mean­ing for me as well. Every Sat­ur­day, come rain, sleet, show, or shine, I lead him into the ring where his horse patiently awaits him. I barely have to assist him now as he climbs the mount­ing block, so steadily and with such con­fi­dence. As I watch him ascend with such assur­ance I am reminded of how dif­fi­cult it was for him to walk, how six months after he was sup­posed to be mak­ing my life a holy hell by his mobil­ity, I watched him begin to take ten­u­ous, fal­ter­ing steps, and was con­cerned at his lack of over­all coordination.

After attain­ing the sum­mit of the mount­ing block I see him attempt to place his foot securely in the stir­rup and swing him­self over the wait­ing back of his ride, and I recall how dis­tress­ing it once was just to secure him in the car to arrive at an out­ing such as this, and how he now rev­els in adventure.

I watch him firmly grasp the reins as he stead­ies him­self on his charge’s back, and see him ten­ta­tively caress the mane of his pony as he attempts to con­vey his affec­tions. There was a time in the not too dis­tant past that he avoided all inter­ac­tions with any­one not genet­i­cally related to him, and I am reminded just how far he has come, how he now seeks out the inter­play of dis­course, the give and take of sim­ple social inter­ac­tion. He is no longer afraid to connect.

I find so often, as I am immersed daily in both the tragic and triv­ial con­se­quences of autism, that I for­get to notice his accom­plish­ments, the small strides and great leaps that com­prise his progress, that con­tribute to his peace­ful, happy soul. These lessons have given that back to me, have offered me the oppor­tu­nity to appre­ci­ate his courage, to be proud of him for every strug­gle he sur­mounts, and even those he doesn’t. This farm extends to him the gift of plea­sure, and affords me the oppor­tu­nity to reflect. I am thrilled to have pro­vided it to him. We both learn some­thing here.

And as I watch him round the cor­ner of the barn, barely glanc­ing at me as I enthu­si­as­ti­cally cheer him on from the side­lines, I real­ize anew how much he has taught me to appre­ci­ate the small­est joys, the slight­est incre­ments of achieve­ment, the plea­sure of sur­pris­ing him with a new­found love. This gift, he bestows upon me.

About the author:

My name is Kim­ber­lee Rutan McCaf­ferty, and I’m the mom of two young sons on the spec­trum, ages three and six. I’m a for­mer ele­men­tary school teacher and presently a stay-at-home mom who is both ther­a­pist and advo­cate for my chil­dren. Recently, I started a blog, http://autismmommytherapist.wordpress.com/ in which I share my family’s expe­ri­ences deal­ing with autism.