February 6, 2008 8:49 AM
Kids with disabilities need responsibilities too!
I ran this over a year ago - rerunning now for new readers and a reminder to lod ones :):
Dear Barbara,
I thought you might like this photo of my son who is nine and suffers from autism washing down the walls of our porch. I think you have inspired a whole bunch of us with disabled children to let them more involved in household chores....Hamish is proving a very willing and able helper, his attitude towards chores is great...just needs babystepping and repetition. Thanks for your blog, it's a real help.
love
Sue
Those of you who've read my books or read here for a while already know the importance of teaching your children from the time they are toddlers to assume as much responsibility as they can for the running of the home.
We don't do this for ourselves. We do it for them.
Toddlers begin with a spirit of service - wanting to help. That can be easily squashed by adults who don't understand their needs and take over to have things done "perfectly." Later, when those adults demand help from their older kids, the kids balk. The sensitive period for building a love of service was lost.
Here is a passage from The Mommy Manual:
Toddlers love to help and feel honored to have something to do. Why not learn to think on their terms, to find ways to let them be useful? They need to know they are an important part of the family. Sometimes I wonder if a lot of crankiness in little children could be averted by making them feel less unimportant.What, after all, can a toddler do? It doesn’t come easily to most adults to turn things over to someone slower and less competent. At first, parents need a little reflection, careful planning, and patience to put some of these new ideas into practice.
That's just part of our job as mothers.
When you realize how important this is in your child's life - in terms of building self-confidence and self-esteem (a feeling of being necessary and useful) - you can see why this is even more important in the life of a child with disabilities.
While everything in us - as nurturing mothers - wants to comfort and take care of the weaker ones, what we really need to do is to push them toward more independence and opportunities to discover that they have an important contribution to make.
Posted in Disabilities, Inclusion, Mothering | Permalink
Comments
Great article. I thought you might be interested in pictures of my own disabled toddler helping me in the kitchen. http://behindthechild.blogspot.com/2008/01/and-rain-it-raineth-every-day.html
I truly believe all children benefit from having a sense of responsibility, of knowing that they can make a contribution to family life. Even my Mog, who is profoundly physically disabled has the job of shouting when she hears the school bus reversing down our driveway. Her sense of achievement when I answer her is wonderful.
Tia
Posted by: Tia | February 7, 2008 5:33 AM
