The Child with Special Needs

Much of how you raise your child with a disability will depend on your family's personal beliefs about childrearing, your child's age, and the nature of his or her disability. An important point to remember is that most of the regular child-raising issues will apply -- children with disabilities will go through the usual childhood stages. They may not go through stages at the same age, at the same rate, or use the same words as children without disabilities, but they are children and kids are kids.

We, as parents, may believe that all children should be treated the same, but in practice that is usually not the case. Why? Because anyone who has been around children, even infants, knows they have different personalities and react differently to similar situations. We encourage and coax the shy child and set limits for the rambunctious one. We tell the loud ones to be quiet and the quiet ones to speak up. We offer different activities to the child who loves to paint than to the one who wants to play ball. Children just are not the same -- but they should have the same opportunities.

Among their opportunities should be the chance to assume increasingly greater degrees of responsibility and independence. There may be many ways in which your child can help himself or herself or other members of the family, including doing chores around the house. You will need to consider what these activities might be, given your son or daughter's disabilities and capabilities. As you expect and encourage your child to assume responsibility, his or her sense of pride and competence will also increase. As Ivonne Mosquera remarks:

"Even though I'm blind, even though it may take me a bit longer to do certain things, I can still do them...Once you accomplish a goal, you'll be the person who feels good about it. Whether or not other people congratulate you for it, you'll feel better, and you'll know that you did it because of you -- because you never gave up." (Krementz, 1992, p. 37)

Conversely, to not expect or encourage your child to contribute to self-care or household matters may send the message that he or she is not capable of helping. Dependence is fostered instead, as Teresa discovered with her daughter Betsy. "First, they were little things like turning on the bathwater. Then she wanted me to carry her instead of using crutches. She refused to even try using them. I couldn't make myself say no, yet I knew that somehow this was going too far." (Finston, 1990, p. 72)

Of course, the nature and severity of your child's disability may affect how much he or she is able to participate in household duties and so on. Peggy Finston (1990) remarks:

"The issue, then, for each of us is what is a "realistic" amount of normality to expect from our child? If we expect too much, we run the risk of rejecting him as he is. If we expect too little, we will fail to encourage him to do the most he can with himself. There is no one answer for all of us, or even for all of us dealing with the same condition. The best we can do is to realize that this is an ongoing question that we need to consider." (p. 81)

Perhaps some of the most encouraging words for parents come from children who have disabilities, whose experiences and feelings are described in numerous books. One consistent idea they express is that when parents expect a child with a disability to develop his or her capabilities -- whatever these may be -- this empowers and strengthens the child. This sense of empowerment can be found, for example, in the dedication Tom Bradford wrote for his book about hearing loss; he dedicated the book to his mother "who never let me know that my hearing loss could have been a limitation" (Bradford, 1991, p. iii). Eli, a twelve-year-old whose stroke resulted in several physical disabilities, writes, "My friends and family helped me overcome my fears. They encouraged me to try everything, even if I was determined that I couldn't" (Krementz, 1992, p. 16). Fourteen- year-old Sarah says that, despite her artificial leg, "my parents sent me to a regular nursery school, to swimming lessons and camp -- everything other kids did...I think my family's encouragement has a lot to do with the fact that I have such a positive attitude. They never sat me in front of the TV or stopped me from doing anything I wanted to try. They gave me a normal childhood" (Krementz, 1992, p. 83). Robert, who has cerebral palsy, remembers that his mother said to him one day, "Robert, why don't we focus on what you can do instead of what you can't do?" This was, he believes, "my biggest turning point -- I took off like a rocket!" (Kriegsman, Zaslow, & D'Zmura-Rechsteiner, 1992, pp. 43-44)

Adapted from information published by the National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities