Are children with special needs destined to failure?
Can parents of children with special needs help and guide their children towards success in life?
In this article, I will try to answer these questions and others, drawing on my own personal experience as a mother, educator and life coach.
In fact, I myself am the mother of a child with special needs.
A parent who discovers that his child is different from other children panics.
When I was a young mother, I took my sons to the Tel-Aviv zoo. We were standing next to the baboon's cage, watching them peel bananas and throw the peels to the children. All the children couldn't stop laughing except my little son, who didn't laugh at all. My son was a nice child who used to smile a lot. At first I thought that perhaps the railing was in the way because he was short so I picked him and said to him: "Look at the baboon, he is throwing peels." My son still didn't laugh and couldn't understand what I was talking about. I don't know where I got the stroke of insight but perhaps it was because of my work with children in the education field. I put him down, and said to him: "Look at my eyes." He looked at me and I was appalled. His pupils were clouded over, with a grayish-white film. I didn't know what to do.
It was very alarming and stressful. I immediately took a taxi home and phoned my husband. I said to him: "Our little child is blind." I then rushed my son to Ichilov hospital, where he was operated on and his clouded lens were removed from his eyes (the tissue had grown from the inside of the eye). After the operations I was told that I had a child with special needs and there was no medical solution at that time (1972). As a young mother, I was shocked by this news, because my child had been using his natural intelligence to bypass the limitations of his eyesight, and he seemed like other children (to most observers), until that fateful visit to the zoo.
As a mother and educator, I was determined that this child would succeed not less than other children and maybe even more, in spite of his disability. My son likes to say that I threw him into the deep water and let him swim, but isn't exactly correct, because I was there for him throughout his trials. With my experience as an educator of children with special needs, I saw that from an early age, he tried to do everything that his elder brother did. He didn't remain passive and complain that it was difficult for him. I watched over him with a mother's eye. I saw that he had the motivation and the daring to take things apart and rebuild them (like Lego parts). He tried again and again until he succeeded. When I realized that this child had great resourcefulness and motivation, I decided to make a special effort to give him the opportunity to discover the world just like other children. In time, he did indeed receive praise from his teachers in the normal high school where he studied.
Today, this child is an adult of 38, a computer instructor who has completed his first degree in social sciences (specializing in management) at the Open University, writes articles and is responsible for accessibility at "Lotus Guidance for Change". He is active in many voluntary fields, a "complete" person, by all accounts, despite his visual impairment.
During my career as an educator, I used to receive, each year one child with special needs. I worked with them on three levels: social, personal and family. On the social level, we worked a great deal on the acceptance of differences, to see the person with a disability as a complete person with his needs, and understand him. The work with young children is based on personal example and guided questions. The children themselves found creative solutions like helping the children with special needs to go down steps, helping them to move to the yard, clearing the way for them between the tables and so on. In addition to the normal educational program, there was an emphasis on strengthening their self awareness, and their self confidence so that they would understand that they were an integral part of the group, and children like all the rest, with special needs which should be taken into account. I let them participate in every activity in accordance with their ability.
The project of enrichment, according to each child's signal strengths, was the pride of my work. We gave the children reinforcement for the successful manifestation of their abilities.
The children, around them, saw those with special needs, making progress and fully participating in the classroom. In the course of time, the children with special needs went on to attend normal schools. Likewise, the children with special needs, co-operated with the other children, played with them, participated in afternoon courses and made good friends.
The improvement in achievement of the children with special needs was a direct result of the leverage of their inner resources, the strengthening of their self confidence, and the improvement in the quality of their lives.
In the process of NLP treatment or coaching the parents of children with special needs, it's important to change "the pictures" that are running through the parent's brains; "Maybe I did something bad in pregnancy that injured the foetus?"
"Why did it happen to us?" and other forms of guilt feelings. The coacher should work with the parents on changing their patterns of thought and behavior such as the wish to please the child or spoil him. It's important that parents of children with special needs should be able to give their children clear boundaries, together with sufficient leeway to strengthen their self confidence. Thus they will foster an independent person who creates value in their life and their surroundings.
In life coaching, parents are helped to see the virtues and abilities of their children and to build a success strategy in order to be able to see them as ordinary children.
