About Maggy Larsen
Maggy Larsen has B.S. in English Education from Oregon State
University and a Ed.M. in School Administration from Boston University.
She has had a career as an English teacher for eighteen years. Her
current interest is in the area of teaching special needs children. She
resides in Fairfax, Virginia, with her husband and two children.
Maggy recently worked in a small Christian school for students with
learning differences. Her interest in publishing her writing increased as
she worked with students who were challenged in many of the same
ways as her daughter, Kelsey. As quarterly parent conferences were
mandatory, Maggy also met with the families of her students. The
families were living with biochemical imbalance, ADHD, developmental
disability, difficult behaviors, overanxious disorder and were
pursuing medicine and psychiatry for their children who actually were enrolled in the school because
of dyslexia and differences in their learning styles. In spite of medical intervention and teachers in
school who were trained to meet the needs of learning differences, many parents faced deterioration of
behavior in their children. As the child matured through adolescence, self concept changed as
impulsive acting out, confusion, reaction to this change returned many parents to the beginning point
with the need for new medicine and more psychiatry.
After successful drug and educational intervention during the elementary school years, their adolsecent
denied that drug intervention was necessary. Often the student who had significantly improved in
academics in elementary school reached a plateau or even regressed during adolescence. Successful
learning techniques learned in elementary school were abandoned by the adolescents as ineffective.
Denial of all need for intervention was often the mark of Maggy's high school English classes. Many
parent conferences indicated a need by the parents to seek residential care for their child. Maggy saw
in many parents the inability to cope with the adolescent child who still had ADHD, dyslexia, and
biochemical imbalances that now was marking their child as mentally ill in addition to the learning
disabilities.
Because Maggy taught in a Christian school, she was able to speak freely to parents and students about
Christ's love and help for them. She became convinced that she needed to share her story with parents
who are traveling the same parenting path as she in the hope that they would desire to allow Jesus to
put them on a Christian path where they would find that the only healer is Jesus. He heals the heart so
that we can be the parents of children who may struggle with disabilities for the rest of their lives.
Maggy's story is that God heals the heart of the family while He provides the blessings of this day and
age: psychiatry, psychology, medicine, and medical and educational breakthroughs in working with
biochemical imbalances and learning differences. Her desire is that every parent of a special needs child
can give glory to God for their children and be thankful for the blessings that He brings through these
uniquely gifted children.
