Stillwater Sibshops

I'm very excited to tell you about a new opportunity for siblings of children with special needs in Stillwater.  It's called Sibshops!  Last year, while I was teaching at the OSU Child Developmen Lab, we heard about this amazing program.  Sibshops are workshops where the sibs (as the are called in the program) have the opportunity to play fun games, talk about the good, bad, and so-so of having a sibling with special needs, and meet (and hopefully become friends with) other sibs.  Fortunately for us, Don Meyer, the head Sibshops guy, held a training at the annual Down Syndrome Association of Central Oklahoma convention.  This allowed us to have 5 people attend and become first generation facilitators.  That means that we are allowed to train other facilitators so we can make sure that Sillwater Sibshops thrives for many years to come (2nd generation facilitators can't train others). 

We held our first workshop on Saturday, November 3 and although I wish we would have had a larger group of children, it was great.  I got reports from a couple of parents that their children felt comfortable with the whole experience, loved the games, and enjoyed meeting new friends.  To me, that's a successful workshop.  One of the kids was even asking when the next Sibshop will be as he left.  For the next workshop, we plan to open it up to sibs from all of the Stillwater elementary schools and have a larger turn out.  I'll keep you updated on how things go.

If you know of a child between the ages of 5-14 in the Stillwater area that would enjoy/benefit from a Sibshop experience, please let them know about us and give me their email address so I can notify them of our next workshop.