Articles
Writing on intellectual and developmental disability, transition planning, and the knowledge parents hold about their children that nothing else preserves. Grouped by the territories the publication covers.
Transition Planning, Not Succession Planning
The industry built itself around succession — a legal-financial transfer at an event. The families who needed help were living a transition. These pieces examine the gap.
June 9, 2026
The IDD field borrowed "succession" from trusts and estates law and built its long-term planning around a word that named the wrong moment. What families actually live is a transition — a multi-year transfer of judgment, knowledge, and relationship that cannot happen at a moment.
June 9, 2026
The IDD field has been planning for the wrong event — preparing families for the parent's absence when what was needed was the reduction of the parent's irreplaceability while she was still present. The first work is contingency. The second is the plan.
The Convenient Myths
Three myths the industry and the broader culture propagate — each of which harms parents while appearing to honor them. These pieces name the cost.
Essays in development.
The Silo Problem
Silos are permanent structural features of the IDD service ecosystem, not defects waiting to be repaired. These pieces examine what works instead.
June 9, 2026
The IDD field organized its services into silos and spent decades trying to connect them. The connection was never the problem — no silo held the whole person. Only the parent did. What was missing was not interoperability but a human continuity operating system.
Transitional Autonomy
Autonomy is not a binary. It is a gradual, parallel arc that both parent and child move along. These pieces describe what that looks like in practice.
Essays in development.
The Parent's Wellbeing
The parent's wellbeing matters as much as the child's — a direct refutation of the unstated premise the field operates on. These pieces say so plainly.
June 9, 2026
The IDD field built its planning instruments around a single unspoken assumption — that the parent would always be there. This essay names what the field never did: the parent was not the planner; the parent was the plan.
Permission to Breathe
A shift is taking place for parents of adult children with IDD. These pieces follow it — the moments where what was hidden begins to be named.
Essays in development.