A parent support group and a parent people can't stop laughing with inspired our topics this week. Here's a road map to our conversation for your fast-forwarding convenience.

00:35 Intros and What's New With You? — This week, we've been keeping busy not winning the Hamilton lottery, not being very successful at public speaking, and not remembering to keep our lengthy Facebook discussions to the hours when Nicole is awake.

05:43 How Important Is It for Your Kid to Have Friends? — And is it important to your kid, or to you? We consider the problem of kids having no friends, kids having the wrong friends, kids caring not enough about friends or too caring much, until really we all just have to lie down in a dark room with a wet rag over our eyes. It is too much.

15:36 Chewbacca Mom — Fortunately, the Internet erupted this week with just the right thing to cheer us up: a mom laughing with unbridled glee at the Chewbacca mask she bought entirely for herself. We wonder what it is that caught everyone's imagination about this thing, just how for real it is, and why we can't seem to go viral like that. C'mon, listeners! Do we need to put on masks for you?

26:52 Interview of the Week — Terri talked with Robert Rummel-Hudson about another thing with the potential to make parents either smile or lie down in a dark room: getting kids with special needs involved in extracurricular activities. The result is often a successful inclusion experience with large dollops of cringeworthy not-wonderfulness.

29:42 Shameless Self-Promotion — Amanda has an article on "8 Multisensory Techniques for Teaching Reading"; Terri wants you to visit her blog Parenting Isn't Pretty, which may or may not have a new post today; Nicole shares a Q&A on inclusion; and Catherine recommends Fun Ways to Exercise With Your Kids and Family, which you should just think of as ways to play.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Through snow and carpooling and book finishing and bad parenting karma we struggled to bring you this group chat. Here's our road-map of what we discussed, for your fast-forwarding convenience:

0:44 Intros and What's New With You — Nicole is chewing her toast during our podcast, not chewing her toes. An important distinction.

2:19 Keeping Caregivers Informed — When we heard about Little Peanut on the Go, an app that facilitates sharing of information with babysitters and other caregivers (including grandparents, if they're app-friendly), it got us thinking about how we communicated with our kids' sitters back in the dark ages when you had to rely on whiteboards and didn't have to worry about wifi.

14:44 Keeping Schools Informed — Speaking of the free flow of information, how come schools still send you home 100 pieces of paper at the start of the school year? Shouldn't we be able to fill out forms online? And get texts and e-mails instead of handouts? And act like our kids are going to school in the 21st century? Is there an app for that?

26:55 Interview of the Week — From caregivers and schools, we move on to communicating with doctors in a chat with author and blogger Robert Rummel-Hudson about the relationships parents of kids with special needs form with our kids' doctors and specialists. (Warning: that all goes away when they become adults, alas.)

39:15 Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri mentioned a blog post about Parenting Karma; Amanda shared a colleague's infographic on the Anatomy of an Effective Email to Your Child’s Teacher; Catherine introduced the transition of her About.com site to Verywell; and ... have you heard Nicole is writing a book? It's got her kind of preoccupied. We also thanked those who've been shamelessly promoting us with iTunes stars and reviews, especially Maos and SusieMein. Keep those kudos coming, please!

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

It's a week of looking forward at the responsible young adults our kids are becoming and looking back at the really bad TV they (and we) adored in the past. Here's a road map to our conversation:

0:49: What’s New With You? — We’ve got dogs, we’ve got scorpions and tarantulas, we’ve got illicit lizards, and we hope we don’t have bedbugs.

4:22: Big-Kid Milestones — While there's no equivalent of a baby book to enter them in, teens and young adults have plenty of firsts that parents rejoice over. We celebrated Terri's daughter's first solo call to AAA with remembrances of other older-child triumphs.

13:20: TV-Show Resurrections — Hey, have ya heard, there's an update to Full House hitting Netflix today! For kids who grew up loving the Tanners — like Terri's and Amanda's daughters, who have been counting down the days — Fuller House is a major TV event. But what about the family TV of our youth? When will we get our update on the Bradys, the Partridges, the Keatons, the Bradfords? (Though honestly, the less we hear about the horrifying children's TV Nicole grew up with in Canada, the better.)

25:14: Interview of the Week — Amanda talked with her husband, Jon, about IEP tag-teaming. Let's see one of those family sitcoms do that. (For more on IEPs, listen to an interview from last April with Robert Rummel-Hudson.)

36:03: Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri shared her shiny new tumblr blog, Amanda shared "10 Ways to Help Shy Children Self-Advocate," Catherine passed on her water-bottle organizing tips, and Nicole shares actual links to those Canadian TV shows she mentioned, Mr. Dress-Up and The Friendly Giant. Watch at your own risk.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

The Speed Rounds you've been listening to all week will be replacing Round 3 and 4 as you've known them -- we're tucking those mini-interviews into our group chats starting January 15. So the end of our anniversary week seemed like a good time to look back on our favorite Round 3s, Round 4s, and even Round 2s (which will still be bringing you entertainment chat every Tuesday-ish.) If you want to listen to the full episodes after hearing us chat about them, here are the links:

+ Nicole's favorites: Round 4s by Amanda and her husband Jon; Round 2s on Dancing With the Stars
+ Amanda's favorites: Round 3 on school lunches with Lexi Walters Wright; Round 4 on IEP meetings with Robert Rummel-Hudson
+ Catherine's favorites: Round 4 on Inside Out and Special Needs with Robert Rummel-Hudson; Round 2 on audiobooks and Dancing With the Stars
+ Terri's favorites: Round 3 on kids and commercialization with Lexi Walters Wright (and that Hulk cologne pull-quote); Round 2s on So You Think You Can Dance

(If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

[This is an encore presentation of a Parenting Roundabout episode originally released on April 1, 2015 as a Round 3. If you listened to it the first time, this is your second chance to follow up on all the resources and ideas mentioned that you just never quite got around to. And if you didn’t listen to it the first time -- hey, it's new to you! Either way, please listen and enjoy.]

Involving special-education students in IEP meetings is an important step along the road to self-advocacy, but one which parents may reasonably feel carries the risk of detonating a landmine. Terri chatted with Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of Schuyler's Monster: A Father's Journey with His Wordless Daughter and blogger at Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, about that treacherous transition; how his daughter, Schuyler, now 15, is handling it; and how he's handling including her in an often hurtful and antagonistic process. We considered the power of a kid handing over an iPad with a question to be asked; our suspicions that the barrage of test scores that opens an IEP meeting is just there to break parents down; and how really lousy it must feel to sit in a room where people are saying things about you that you don't understand but that don't sound good. For more on IEP meetings, read Robert's recent blog post on IEPs and meet the players in Terri's IEP team article. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, please come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

As a parent of a child with special needs, you'd like to think that the transition to adulthood will be some sort of triumphant finish line to all the advocating and planning and worrying and IEP meetings. Sadly, although the IEP meetings end, the rest of that stuff just keeps on keeping on. On this week's Round 4, Terri chats with monthly contributor Robert Rummel-Hudson about being overwhelmed by the uncertainty of our kids' future and the certainty that we'll have to keep providing direction, even as there's less and less of a graceful way to do that. Come wallow with us in worry, won't you? (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

Parents of kids with special needs can get pretty cynical pretty fast -- that's what happens when people sworn to serve your kid break all of their IEP promises without breaking a sweat -- but at the very start of a new school year, it's still possible to imagine that things will go as planned, and nobody will let your kid down, and you won't have to have many many unpleasant meetings with school personnel. Terri chats with Robert Rummel-Hudson about high hopes for this school year, the future that is starting to rise up in front of his daughter, and what it will take to set her successfully on the path to the life she wants. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

After listening to today's podcast, you're going to want to go check out the cry playlist we set up a while back, because we're all about the blues. Nicole in particular is lamenting her partially empty nest and resenting all the mom friends who never told her she was going to feel like this when her son moved out. We consider some other things that never seemed to have made it into the parenting manual -- could we have had a heads up about the way sending kids off to school doesn't mean you get your life back, maybe? -- and go on to formulate some advice of our own about motherhood, like "You're going to want sleep more than you'll want anything else" and "It is perfectly acceptable to ignore your mother's advice."

Finally, we made our weekly recommendations of things worth checking out: Catherine liked a Cool Mom Tech list of organizational apps for back-to-school; Amanda appreciated Ellen Seidman's post on people staring at your child; Nicole thought the book Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood by Naomi Wolf tells it like it is; and Terri sugggested reading Robert Rummel-Hudson's post on the R Word, even though it's sad that we're still even talking about that.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for editing our episodes, and to Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music (and for still living at home, so Nicole doesn't come completely unhinged). If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

This week on Round 4, Nicole chatted with Robert Rummel-Hudson about his exciting new business partnership. What started out as bit of an experiment has become a life-changing moment. Rob tells us that recently he was invited to speak at a conference about his book, Schuyler’s Monster, a story about his daughter’s nonverbal world. While Rob has spoken at dozens of conferences before, this time he decided to try something different and ask Schuyler, now a tenth-grader, to participate in the presentation. After Rob spoke, Schuyler came on stage to answer several audience questions using her AAC device. Well, apparently, Schuyler stole the show! Rob was thrilled to watch her confidently engage and interact with audience members and soon realized he had become overshadowed by his own daughter. He tells Nicole that he sees Schuyler’s potential as a self-advocate and is excited about her future. Nicole thinks that Rob could soon be out of job! To follow Rob’s new adventures in public speaking go to www.rummelhudson.com, and to read some of Schuyler's answers, go to her dad's blog. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://www.parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

For a special Round 3 this month, our two Round 4 podcasters, Robert Rummel-Hudson and Charlie Zegers, got together to talk about the experience of being the father of a child with special needs. They chat about articles on special-needs moms that could just as well be dad-inclusive, stereotypes of special-needs dads and dads in general, the way the father narrative is evolving, and their frustration with dads who do not step up. For more on the subject, read Rob's book Schuyler's Monster and his blog posts on Fighting Monsters With Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, and visit Charlie's site Parent Spectrum.

Pixar's latest offering, Inside Out, has been drawing rave reviews from critics and moviegoers and particular recognition from parents of kids with special needs as a way to make abstract emotions concrete. Robert Rummel-Hudson, who blogs about special needs at Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, has seen the film, and shares his thoughts on what's great about it and how it can help you start a useful dialog with your child (and maybe help you understand yourself better too). For more on the subject, read "Unspoken Stories of the Secret Heart" on Support for Special Needs and "Special-Needs Perspectives on Pixar's Inside Out" on About.com Parenting Special Needs.

You'd like to think that once the school has some success with your child with special needs, that success will be heartily adopted and built upon and made a permanent fact of your child's life. Yet too often what you get is individual support rather than institutional support, and things change year to year and school to school in heartbreaking ways. Terri chatted with Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of Schuyler's Monster: A Father's Journey with His Wordless Daughter and blogger at Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, about how much we value the people who get it and do everything they can, and how frustrating it is to start every year wondering if such an individual will be part of our child's program or whether he or she will be at the mercy of educators who feel that kids with special needs are Not Their Job. We talk about the way options get limited for learners with special needs in the most seemingly well-meaning way; how fear of failure translates into never getting to try; the need for inclusion to involve expectations as well as environment; and the value of homework as a sign that someone, somewhere is trying to educate your kid. For more on the subject, read Rob's post "The Faith of Monkeys," and if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Although embarrassing children has long been a specialty of parents, the addition of social media to the options for spreading stories about that thing your kid did has raised privacy issues and caused concern over the way parents of children with disabilities in particular portray their youngsters and to what purpose. Terri chatted with Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of Schuyler's Monster: A Father's Journey with His Wordless Daughter and blogger at Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, about the value of parents sharing their stories, the importance of balancing bad with good, the danger of pity parties, the hope of preparing a platform from which kids can launch their own adult advocacy, and the sneaking suspicion that a generation that's grown up online doesn't have the same conception of "privacy issues" that their pearl-clutching elders do. Listen in, and check back the first Thursday of every month for more conversations with Rob about raising kids with special needs.

Involving special-education students in IEP meetings is an important step along the road to self-advocacy, but one which parents may reasonably feel carries the risk of detonating a landmine. Terri chatted with Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of Schuyler's Monster: A Father's Journey with His Wordless Daughter and blogger at Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords and Support for Special Needs, about that treacherous transition; how his daughter, Schuyler, now 15, is handling it; and how he's handling including her in an often hurtful and antagonistic process. We considered the power of a kid handing over an iPad with a question to be asked; our suspicions that the barrage of test scores that opens an IEP meeting is just there to break parents down; and how really lousy it must feel to sit in a room where people are saying things about you that you don't understand but that don't sound good. For more on IEP meetings, read Robert's recent blog post on IEPs and meet the players in Terri's IEP team article.

What's your IEP experience like? Add your opinion in the comments. And if you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, please come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.