In November of 2014, my youngest grandchild, Ian, was born a month prematurely in an emergency surgery.   He came into this world silent, lifeless, and an unhealthy color.  We don’t know how long he had been without oxygen, but we do know that time interval has had a profound effect on his life and ours.  Ian is now nine years old going on four.  Finding resources to help him through the years has been a struggle for his mother, his father while he was alive, and for me because I have been so closely involved in my grandchildren’s lives.  

 After running into brick walls trying to get the best services to help Ian’s autism and mild cerebral palsy, my daughter and I often spoke about starting a blog to help other parents of autistic children wade through the autistic services maze.  At the same time, we were always looking for sensory and educational items to help Ian deal with a myriad of sensory issues and delayed cognitive growth. 

At some point, we thought combining autistic information with a webstore filled with sensory and educational items selected especially for autistic, ADHD, and special needs children could be helpful to other families looking for help.  We also thought about how each and every autistic child has a “special gift” they can share with others.  Thus, “Ian’s Special Gifts” was born. 

 While neither of us are degreed in special education, we do both have educational backgrounds.  My daughter has worked with pre-kindergarten children for many years in children’s learning centers, and I taught eighth grade English for several years.  More importantly, we have first-hand experience working with a special needs child in our home and hope to help other families of special needs children with what we have learned.  We also hope you will join us by sharing your stories and information you have learned to add to our blogs. 

We are well aware that there are many others writing blogs with more education or more experience with autistic and special needs children than we have, but we do feel that we have helpful information to offer and a store with items that can make the lives of you and your children much less stressful on a daily basis.

We hope you will join Ian, his older brother, Christopher, his mother, Beth, who is also my daughter, and me, Linda Ashley, on this journey through the puzzle of autism by joining our blog and finding helpful items for your child in our store.  To help with autism research, we will donate 1% of all sales to autism research with the hope that a way to prevent autism can be found as well as a way to help children and adults who are currently on the spectrum live more independent, well-adjusted lives.

Thank you for visiting our site today.  We hope you will visit us often and share your experiences from your autism journey with us to help others dealing with the same issues.  

                                                                         WELCOME TO 

 IAN’S SPECIAL GIFTS!