Tuesday, November 2, 2010

A Little Break for Families of Children with Special Needs


QUEENS, N.Y. -- Thursday, for Jennifer Choi, is the day of rest, a much-anticipated Sabbath that comes and goes all too soon.
On Thursdays, Ms. Choi can feel reliably confident that her husband will not come home to find her tense and exhausted. By bedtime, both of her children will have eaten dinner and been bathed. The 3-year-old, Spencer, who has a speech delay and a developmental disorder, will not have walked around the living room in self-soothing circles the moment she turned her attention elsewhere. Her 6-year-old, Logan, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, will have finished his homework.
Thursday is the best day because that is the day Catalina Lopez — cheerful, well trained and all of 17 years old — comes to watch Spencer and Logan, each for an hour, separately, and peace descends on the family’s two-bedroom apartment in western Queens.

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