Lessons on kids with disabilities

In church today, we had a guest speaker come speak to us about teaching kids with disabilities. He is a teacher of autistic kids but he gave a few insights for teachers about teaching kids with any disability. I may add here that I don't like the term disability too much. If something is disabled, it doesn't work. You disable a bomb or disable the wires to stop the flow of electricity before you work on the wires. Many people have challenges they work around, but they are not disabled and are actually quite capable.

I was very appreciative of the speaker's suggestions. I think it is so important that people realize that kids with any kind of disability are actually quite capable in many ways to do what the other kids can do. It just may need to be varied a little. When I taught music to the kids in our church for instance, I made sure that I had lots of visual clues and games to help the kids learn the songs. We had Chance, a boy with down syndrome and two kids with autism. I couldn't help but notice that too often, the kids with disabilities were not participating in what was going on. They didn't know the words to the songs yet, understand the story or got bored with all of the talking. Simple changes really made the situation more enjoyable for those kids.

The speaker suggested letting the kids be involved and thinking of them not as the "autistic child", or the" deaf child" first, but by their names. He said people didn't mean harm, but by referring to kids by their challenges as opposed to their names was putting the focus in the wrong place. And he talked about letting these kids do all that they were capable of doing even if they needed a little help. The point was letting the kids do what they could do and not limiting them.

At the end of his presentation, he opened it up for questions or suggestions. We have kids with greater challenges than Chance in our church and sometimes, we feel a little timid to bring up that we have a child who is deaf, because he is doing so well now and our issues are not the same as some of the other parents. But, Chance's journey to get to where he is has been a very involved one that required lots of time, effort and people. We know a little bit about working with a child who has a challenge. We've worked our tails off, as have teachers and others who helped along the way. And, Chance is not healed. He is still deaf. He does not hear everything and sometimes, little things like a game of "Name That Tune," in church can be frustrating for him because by the time he has heard enough notes of a song to know what it is, other kids have been chosen to come up and guess the next song. Chance also does not hear everything and sometimes will pass by someone who has said "hi" to him in the hall of church because he has not heard them due to all of the noise in the hall.

We have found that doing simple things like making sure that Chance can hear us in noisy environments, pointing out to him when someone has said "hi" and he did not hear them, and giving him his own song book so that he can look at the words to a song for as long as he needs makes a big difference. I wouldn't want anyone to get upset because Chance did not respond to them in the hall, or expect him to know the words to the songs before he is ready.

There are people who will always hold a very special place in my heart for how they interacted with Chance when we first found out he was deaf. This was back when Chance did not have a lot of language skills and could not respond to you if you talked to him, or even when we knew what his possibilities were going to be. He also did not hear things quite often. But there were those angel people at church, among our neighbors and family who by the smallest actions, let Chance be a part of things.

Some family members would pull Chance onto their laps and engage him one on one during family gatherings, ensuring that he did not get lost in the mass of family.

One man at church had the last name of Bird. He asked me how you sign bird and then he did the sign for bird and when he greeted Chance, they would do the bird sign together. This man also sat by Chance when he was nervous in class and became quite a buddy to him. At one point, when we were at a church meeting, Chance suddenly left his seat and walked to the back of the room where he gave his "bird" buddy a hug.

Another woman we knew would tap Chance gently to get his attention when he went by her, then she would greet him with a big smile and say "Hello Chance!" She did not let the fact that Chance did not hear her like the other kids, stop her from interacting with him.

Then there was the week that the leader of the kids at church and I taught the kids about kids with challenges and talked to them about what Chance's hearing aids were and how they helped him to hear. I took pictures of Chance and his brother with several other kids in the neighborhood playing and we taught the kids a song called,"I'll Walk With You", which is about how even though you don't talk, walk or act like most people do, I won't walk away from you. One line of the song goes,"If you don't talk like most people do, some people walk away from you, but I won't! I won't!" When I was teaching the kids that song, I didn't know if I would be able to make it through the song with out crying. I was just so touched by the message of the song, and it was so important to me that my little son be given the chance to participate with the other kids and be loved. Just this past week, Chance told me that,"I'll Walk With You," is his favorite church song.

The librarian at Chance's old school told me what a sweet boy he was and made an effort to talk to him at school.

These people are angels to me. They reached out and loved my son at a challenging time for him. They worked to understand him and interact with him. I will love them forever for that.