Saving children’s lives one card at a time

When the Joshua Center for Neurological Disorders opened in 1996, our founder, Becky Ottinger, made it her mission to help children succeed in school, no matter their disability. After years of working with children with Tourette, High-Functioning Autism, OCD, and ADHD, our “Me and My World™ Social Skills Board Games and Curriculum” were developed. Children with neurological disorders often learn differently than others, so they need to be taught differently. Parents and educators have been thrilled with the success they’ve seen through our program. Schools have informed us they are not only utilizing our program with children with neurological disorders, but with neurotypical children, too.

After Sandy Hook Becky created Speak Up cards for the Me and My World set. As the nation struggles with keeping our children safe, we have added a new branch to our program called “Speak Up For Schools”. The school tragedies have shown us that often kids are afraid to speak up even when they’ve heard something. Just telling children to speak up isn’t enough. They need to discuss a variety of situations to know how to apply what they learn and that is where our program comes in. The “Speak Up For Schools” cards can be used in a variety of ways: educators can read a card a day over the intercom every morning and classes could discuss for a few minutes, smaller groups or classes could spend time going through the cards, or they can even be used one-on-one. The set sells for $99 and the cards are sorted by the following topics:

• School Safety
• Stealing
• Stress
• Threats