One of a parent's biggest fears for their child with special needs is how other children will react to him. Will he have friends? Will he be bullied? Will he spend a lot of time alone? How do you pave the way for him to create strong bonds with his peers?

Since We're Friends, a children's book by Celeste Shally, beautifully illustrated by David Harrington, is a lovely way to do just that. An unnamed child has a friend named Matt; Matt is autistic and sometimes reacts differently to situations that arise on the playground. Matt's friend helps him understand instructions during games and distracts him when he gets upset. They share many common interests; Matt talks a lot about animals, but his friend doesn't mind because he likes animals too.

We donated a copy of this book to Billy's pre-K class where we're happy to report he has quite a few friends. Ages 3 to 5, his classmates vary widely in their development. We were delighted that he would be in an inclusion class, half of which is normally developing children. Some of the older girls are particularly sweet to Billy, holding his hand during line-up, engaging him on the playground and generally watching out for him. When he started preschool last summer, Billy's social interactions amounted to, at best, "parallel play," playing with toys alongside other kids without really interacting with him. In less than a year, he has started seeking out other kids to play chase, hold hands or share a ball.

As positive an experience as this has been for Billy, I think it's good for normally developing kids to have the experience of interacting with peers of varying abilities as well. Learning patience, compassion and seeing first-hand that someone who is different can still be a fun and beloved friend -- well, I think those lessons are at least as important as reciting the alphabet and counting to 20.

As parents of special needs kids, we often debate how much to talk about our child's challenges. We fear stigma, expect judgment, and desperately want to protect our children. Dave and I went through this same debate, not wanting other parents or kids to assume things about Billy that aren't true: that he's weird or violent or any number of other myths about autism that are widely prevalent. Ultimately, though, we decided the best defense was a good offense, and that we would err on the side of too much information, rather than too little.

The only way to dispel myths is with hearty dose of reality. Books like Since We're Friends are a good place to start.

I sat in the corner of the speech therapy room yesterday, holding my breath. Billy was cradling a baby doll. He carefully dipped a washcloth into a tub of water and then dabbed it on the "baby's" head. A small trickle of water ran into its eyes. "She needs a towel!" Billy informed us. "Wipe her eyes!"

And he did. Then he laid the baby down, covered it with the towel, and began to recite Good Night, Beach, one of his favorite bedtime stories. He reached for the toy bottle and gave it to the baby. Then he reached for the toy juice bottle and mimed pouring it on the baby's head. We all laughed, including Billy. So he did it again.

I couldn't believe it. My child was engaging in normal, imaginative play. When offered three choices -- a toy farm, Playdough, and the baby doll -- he chose the baby doll and acted out routines with which he was familiar: bath, story time, bedtime, feeding.

This is huge for us. It was only a few months ago, when we started Floortime therapy, that the most interactive play I could really get with Billy was opening and closing doors with him. We did a lot of opening and closing doors.

He liked his toy fort. And he liked his toy barn. But mostly what he did with them was open and close the doors. If I tried to introduce some of the toy figures and engage him in interactive play, he would just turn his back on me and move on to something else.

When I questioned my fellow Floortimers -- a Yahoo! user group composed of parents, caregivers, therapists and others who are engaged in Floortime therapy -- about it, they advised me, rightfully so, that he simply wasn't ready for this level of play yet. Take it back down a step, they advised, follow his lead, and then work your way back up.

So we opened and closed doors. And Dave created a game called, "Open the latch, Daddy!" He placed his hand on the door, making it impossible for Billy to open until he asked for it. We opened and closed doors on the fort. And eventually, we had the Mickey Mouse character demand, "Open the latch, Billy!"

Slowly, Billy started allowing us to introduce the toy figures into the fort game. Then one day, I caught him acting out, word-for-word, an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, using the fort and the toy figures. When I tried to join in, he backed away. But after a week, he'd let me play too, to assume one of the characters, as long as I didn't change the story. There are not words to describe how much I came to hate the episode, "Mickey's Color Adventure." I dreamed about it.

But then one day, something clicked and Mickey was forgotten. Instead, all his figures had a jumping contest. Uniqua from the Backyardigans won almost every time, for some reason. "Yay! She did the highest jump!" he told me. And Batman was universally crap at jumping. Puff the Magic Dragon won a couple of times, but he had wings, so he was kind of cheating. Day after day, we had jumping contests on the fort.

He began to call the figures by name: Mickey Mouse, Uniqua, "the dragon," and for some reason, known only to Billy, one of the plastic Little People, a blonde girl wearing a hat, introduced herself to the others as, "Hi, I'm Uncle Wes," in a deep, gruff voice. I have no idea why he decided this character was his Uncle Wes, who is actually tall, dark-haired and bears absolutely no resemblance to a blonde little girl, but nonetheless, in our house, Uncle Wes she is.

And for the first time in the past two months, he developed an attachment to a stuffed animal, a stage most children go through at a much younger age. Tah-Tah is named after the teddy bear in the cartoon "Ira Sleeps Over," and Tah-Tah sleeps with Billy every night and travels with Billy to Nan's house whenever he "sleeps over." In the last couple of weeks, Tah-Tah has been joined by Eggbert, a large colorful catepillar; Too-Too, Tah-Tah's little brother; and Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. Each has a place on Billy's bed, and both Mama and Daddy have to kiss them all goodnight each night. I can hear him talking to them over the baby monitor sometimes, telling them stories and singing them songs. Sometimes, he tells them, "Too-too! Quiet! It's night-night!"

I know all this probably sounds like mundane childhood play to the parents of normally developing children, but to put things in perspective, a year ago, Billy was running over the baby doll with his Big Wheel, and he rarely said anything that wasn't repetition of a book or TV show.

In addition to practicing Floortime at home, both Billy's speech and occupational therapists at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital take a developmental approach; both are Floortime-trained. So his therapy sessions look a lot like play -- in fact, they are play -- where we try to create the desire to communicate, rather than teach him specific phrases to parrot without understanding their meaning.

We are so excited about Billy's growing interest in imaginative play that we keep adding things to his strange little town that includes a medieval fort, a carnival, an airport, two farms and a train station. It's kind of like a soap opera town. And now he also has a little play house with a Mama, Daddy and baby that allow us to act out routines and social situations and practice things like saying, "Hello" and "goodbye."

When I was looking for a doll house online, I found tons of sites where parents were demanding to know whether playing with a doll would turn their son gay. Seriously. When I was a kid, one of my favorite toys was a Easy-bake Oven, and I certainly hope my son has a stronger interest in babies when he grows up than I now have in cooking.

But after Billy had bathed and fed the baby and put it to bed, he had the baby jump back up and announce, "Baby wants to play barn!" So we took out the barn, and the cow, horse, sheep and chicken had a jumping contest. The cow won.

If an elementary school music class and Floortime therapy had a baby, it would be Kindermusik. I've written before about what fans we are of this program, but having been through an entire semester now of Family Time at Good Samaritan Arts, taught by Jaci Niks, I can be more specific about what is special about Kindermusik -- particularly for kids with special needs.

Kindermusik isn't designed specifically for special needs kids; the classes are available for all children from birth to seven years old. But where a traditional, highly structured music class or lesson might be impractical for an autistic child, or a child dealing with any kind of developmental delay, Kindermusik provides a positive, flexible environment, while still encouraging development of real skills through hands-on participation.

We participate in the Family Time class, which has a mix of ages and allows Billy and Willow to interact in the same class. Like Floortime therapy, Kindermusik supports the child-led philosophy. So while the teacher provides a certain amount of structure, with activities and songs selected prior to class, there is plenty of room for individual expression and creativity. From playing with rhythm instruments and scarves to rocking and listening with Mom and Dad, the activities encourage exploration and family bonding.

Take-home materials include CDs with each unit's music, a set of rhythm instruments (like egg shakers or wood blocks), copies of the books introduced in each unit, a puppet, a game, and a parent's guide with activities you can continue at home to reinforce the new concepts introduced at Kindermusik. Both Billy (age 3 1/2) and Willow (1 year) love and respond to the music. In fact, we hadn't originally planned to enroll Willow in the class, but she had such a positive, joyful response after a visit at 6 months that we decided to make Kindermusik true Family Time once a week.

Some of the music may be familiar to you. In our first unit, we worked with versions of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "Ring Around the Rosey." Our parent's guide explained the origins of these songs, which I'd never known. We also learned new songs like the beautifully restful "Shalom Haverim," which has become a favorite calm-down song, and "Bubbles on Me," which Billy sings every time we blow bubbles. There are traditional American folk songs, music from around the world, such as the beautiful Nigerian Boat Song, and original tunes.

Activities during each class include a "Hello" and "Goodbye" song, a great way to reinforce social skills, a "Family Jam," when we all get to grab various instruments and play along with the music, story time, active listening, and a whole lot of various types of movement. We might be asked to listen for a particular phrase in a song, like "Hands all around, Jing Jang," and when we hear that phrase, we all run together and join hands for a circle dance. We might practice walking slow during the slow beat and jumping fast during the fast beat; or we might wave our scarves up high during the major key and wave them down low during the minor key change. Even if they don't undestand the terminology, you'll be amazed how quickly children pick up on things like key change and rhythm variations.

When we started the class, Billy mostly ran around and around the room non-stop. Our teacher, Ms. Jaci, taught me to let him be. I learned to follow his lead and bring the music to him if need be. Fairly quickly, he saw the advantage of joining the group and getting his pick of instruments. He loves to try out new rhythm instruments, particularly those that allow him to bang stuff with a stick -- and luckily, there are a lot of those.

All of our jaws dropped one night when he grabbed a wood block and started beating out a complicated, syncopated rhythm in time with the recorded music. He knows every song and poem by heart, and it always makes my heart swell to hear him reciting "Happy Little Me," which he learned at Kindermusik. He now loves to join the group for circle dances and playing with the parachute, and at the beginning of each class, he grabs all the stuffed animals lined up along the walls and sets them out on the story blanket for the hello song. Because obviously, they need to participate too.

I can only speak to our experience, and I believe we are truly blessed to have a phenomenal teacher in Ms. Jaci who seems to have a magical way with children of all developmental stages, and we have a great place to go in Tallahassee with Good Samaritan Arts (which also offers all kinds of dance and music classes to kids and adults). But the great thing about Kindermusik is that no matter where you are, you can try out a class in your area for free.If you do, I'd love to hear about your experiences, so please keep in touch!

I have no idea what I actually look like. Oh, I have mirrors in the house, but those images are fleeting. Pictures on Facebook, though, are forever, and thanks to my sister's Photoshop skills, every member of our family has an incredibly inflated sense of our own attractiveness.

Who needs to lose weight? I can just have Sami shave off a few pounds with a few quick clicks of her mouse. She can even give me makeup and fix my hair. She has, in the past, even cut and pasted my open eyes from one picture on to my head in another picture.

If you look through our family album, you'll think we have a whale of a time wherever we go. Our children don't cry. No one, of course, drop-kicked a pumpkin into moving traffic at the pumpkin patch. We enjoyed each ride at the fair equally, without a single meltdown. And Christmas morning was one magic moment after another with every present prompting a rapt, joyful expression captured on film. No one bawled at the sight of Santa; no one sang, "No more Santa! No more Santa!"

There is truth in the reality you see in my photo albums -- our family does have a great time together -- but let's just say it's not the whole truth.

I was thinking of this earlier this week as I thumbed through some old family photos that my mom had gathered together for me. Faded and slightly curled on the edges, there's a sense of unposed immediacy that I don't really see in the carefully cropped pictures of my kids. In one photo, my five-year-old head is half cut off and my dad's boots are visible in the bottom right-hand corner. In another I seem to be more interested in my mom's cute hat than the camera. In another I'm sitting in my crib surrounded by toys, some of which I can actually remember loving. Half the pictures have someone's eyes closed, and in one, a thumb obscures the bottom-right of the image but they capture more than smiling faces. They capture moments of a family's life.

There was a time when getting a perfect shot of a child involved a trip to Sears and a half-dozen backdrops. I'm not sure what a 3-year-old is doing alone in a mountain chalet, but I can remember at least one of those shots framed on a wall in my childhood home. The rare beautiful family snapshot was complete luck, unless you were a trained photographer. Without digital cameras, you had no idea what the pictures looked like until you received the developed roll, a standard 24 or 36 shots, and you didn't have to pay for any disasters, like a thumb over the lens.

Billy used to be a complete ham for the camera. There are pictures of lots of pictures of him smiling for the camera in his first year, still quite a few after his first birthday, fewer after he turned two, and after he turned three, it's a real rare, golden moment when it happens, but when it does, it's magic.

We tried to take him to a professional photographer when he was 18 months old, and though she got some great shots, it was a workout for all of us. As his inability to sit still and make strong eye contact got worse, professional photo sessions really became impractical for us. It takes a special person to nurture that brilliant smile into being and not lose their cool when he tries to dismantle the mountain chalet backdrop.

Some photographers won't even work with special needs kids. I recently heard that one mom of an autistic child, frustrated by dealing with photographers, began training herself to become a pro. The special needs community needs her. I doubt it's her goal, but Sears needs her. I nearly got into a fist fight with a Sears photographer who pulled Billy's arm during an aborted session before his third birthday. You don't mess with a pregnant, hormonal woman and her autistic two-year-old ... there's nothing about that which will end well. I will cut you.

Maiming of strangers aside, though, I have learned to manage my expectations where photos of Billy are concerned. On the day of his school picture, I went with him, brought puppets and danced around like an idiot to get that gorgeous smile. The school photographer was awesome and obviously liked kids. He didn't even raise an eyebrow when I got out in front and sang the opening line of Billy's favorite song at the time: "Fly in the buttermilk..." As Billy responded, "Shoo fly, shoo!" I screamed, "GO!!!!" and pointed at the photographer. Startled, he snapped. Success!

When I'm on my own, I've learned to photograph Billy in action, and I don't expect every picture to show him smiling straight into the camera. As the photos from my own childhood have shown me, sometimes the most precious images might be missing an arm ... or a head. Or have a pair of comfortable boots in the corner or a well-loved, raggedy toy center stage. We don't love them less because the photography isn't perfect -- as long as they show us the people we were, the people we are, and the people we love.