When you’re the parent of a child with a disability, you strive to give your special needs child a full life that provides the same experiences, achievements, opportunities as any non-disabled child. This can be a constant battle, like keeping plates spinning so none will crash to the floor.
Mainstreaming your disabled child into your family life is crucial for promoting inclusivity, building self-esteem, fostering independence, enhancing social skills, and increasing family bonding. Successful integration can be a daunting task as the goal is to give your disabled child appropriate opportunities while also making sure other family members are not feeling neglected or ignored.
Imagine Pediatrics understands how difficult this can be. We recommend beginning with these four steps:
- Ensuring your disabled child has access to appropriate educational opportunities. This might involve enrolling your child in mainstream schools or in specialized programs designed to meet the needs of special needs children. Attending schools with other children, disabled or not, gives your disabled child a sense of “normalcy” and belonging. Sharing educational experiences promotes friendships and bonding that may last a lifetime.
- Providing access to recreational activities and sports. It’s important to provide a range of activities that cater to your child’s particular interests and abilities, including sports, arts and crafts, music, and social outings. Participating in adaptive sports promotes a sense of achievement, healthy competition, and positive comradery. Teammates, with or without a disability, can become life-long friends. Exploring arts and crafts allows special needs children to tap in to their creativity, express themselves and feel a sense of real accomplishment and pride in their work. Having all your children learn to play musical instruments doesn’t just build a sense of togetherness, playing together can also bring a new sense of belonging and family to everyone.
- Assign appropriate chores and responsibilities. Your disabled child needs responsibilities to make them a real part of the family – and your other children need to see their sibling is also contributing in a meaningful way. Chores will help your child develop independence, pride and a sense of teamwork. Post a task list both with chores that your child can accomplish easily and with chores that take a little more effort. This mix of tasks can help your child establish a routine of both simple actions to give them a feeling of accomplishment and jobs that challenge them mentally and physically to achieve the sense of meeting a difficult goal. Assigning your special needs child with chores, and making sure there are repercussions if they do not complete them just as for your non-disabled children, also helps defuse resentment from siblings and help them see your disabled child contributing to the overall success of the family.
- Accounting for their needs in family activities and vacations. Parents will want to primarily select family activities that allow your special needs child to participate. Depending on your child’s disability, this can be a tough challenge or, in some cases, impossible. Ziplining, go kart racing or kayaking may not be options. However, the proprietors of these activities have become very adept at modifying their adventures to include people with disabilities. Before you scratch something off the list of activities, make phone call to the vendor. Very often, they will do all they can to help your special needs child participate in and enjoy the adventure.
- Making all your kids a priority Sometimes, one or more of your non-disabled kids will want to have an experience that just won’t be possible for your disabled child. Remember, not everyone has to participate in everything. Rather than just consider the experience off-limits entirely, allow your non-disabled kids to enjoy their preferred activity, perhaps with your spouse, and use the time to explore a different activity with your disabled child. Don’t fall into a routine of “Dad always goes with Child A and Mom always goes with Child B.” Be sure to switch participants and parents, so everyone has a chance to enjoy one-on-one time with each other.
Mainstreaming special needs children into a full and rich family life is an essential aspect of inclusion and a crucial step towards ensuring that children with disabilities are not left behind. By creating a supportive and inclusive environment, providing access to appropriate educational and recreational activities, and promoting a positive and accepting attitude towards disability, you can help to improve the life and opportunities of all of your children, disabled or not.
