Child Of The Month

Spencer Gray
Age 12

Spencer is a happy child. He is affectionate and has a good personality. He loves music and singing. He’s very friendly. These are Spencer’s strengths as stated on his IEPs from the very first one in 1997. Today these attributes are still the same as he has grown from a child to a teenager.

Spencer is now in Junior High School. His school program consists of community based instructions and functional skills with a weekly community walk to observe safety precautions and trips to the supermarket, local library and parks. The educational curriculum consists of Language Arts, Science, Math, Social Studies, Music and Art. In March the students made a sculpture with papier mache and took a field trip to the Getty Museum to see the art.

Spencer also has a seizure disorder which began with the staring type seizures at 6 years of age. It took a while to get the seizures under control. Occasionally he needs adjustments with his medication (Depakote) as was the case with the onset of puberty but now he is relatively seizure free.

Through the years Spencer has been exposed to different activities soccer, baseball, swimming, surfing, gymnastics, camping and boating. He enjoys water sports and he loves camping. The group activities are not always his first choice. With camping he does a lot of parallel play but will join the group when they have food, music and dancing.

Spencer has progressed extremely well. We consistently raise the bar and he has seldom failed to reach it. He likes math, science and music. We feel very fortunate he is at a school that believes in the children’s capabilities and treats them age appropriate even when they act much younger. Our personal goal is to educate Spencer and guide him to be productive and self sufficient.

We have great people around us that enjoy Spencer as much as we do. We are reminded that life is a journey and what a wonderful but not always easy journey it has been. We look forward to wherever this path may lead. We were told that Spencer was here to teach us unconditional love. Tom and I feel we are better people for having this pure spirit in our life.

Child Of The Month Archive

Exceptional Parent Magazine Feature Article by Cindy Johnson	Alexis Marie Johnson
Child of the Month	Travis Ritter
Child of the Month	Lisa Poore
Child of the Month	Spencer Gray
Child of the Month	Lindsey Young
Child of the Month	Olivia Taylor
Special People Profile	Cheyenne Rain Jackson
Special People Profile	Naomi
Special People Profile	Bobby
Special People Profile	Kevin
Special People Profile	Olivia
Special People Profile	Megan
Special People Profile	Sarah
Special People Profile	Cheyenne D
Special People Profile	Joshua
Special People Profile	Robert
Special People Profile	Frederique
Special People Profile	Julia
Special People Profile	Ryan
Mount Prospect Times Article	Jake
Epilepsy Foundation Newsletter	Will
Exceptional Parent Magazine Story	Joshua D