Teaching without Knowing

Did you know that every day you are teaching?  You ARE!  And for most of us, without a teaching certificate.  Your child is learning from you all the time.

Maybe the most important thing we teach our children, we do without even knowing we are doing it.  While we are focused on helping our children learn to eat, sleep, sit, crawl, walk, talk and all the other things that go into life, we are teaching them who they are.

Teaching a child who he or she is, is critically important!  Our interactions, words, and actions communicate to our child how we feel, what we believe, and what we expect.  A child subconsciously internalizes all of that which becomes what he or she believes about themselves.

In the case of children who have significant special needs, those messages maybe even more important.    Our interactions are teaching a child what it means to be “handicapped.”  Contrary to the connotative meaning of the word, it does not need to mean “helpless.”

I once had a few disturbing conversation with a teacher in an Indiana school Maddie was attending.  The class was playing a very simple (way too simple for Maddie’s level) game of color BINGO.  Maddie won.  Suddenly the verbal children in the room began clamoring to pick a prize for Maddie. 

Taken back, I said to the teacher, “Maddie is very capable of picking her own prize.”

The response left me speechless, “I know but the other kids like helping her.”

So what has been instilled in each child in the room is that Maddie is helpless.  Her capacity, opinions and desires come second to the other kids’ (and too often adults’) need to help.

What would have helped Maddie more would be to expect, encourage, and even demand that Maddie do absolutely everything she was capable of.  Only as a last resort would something be done for her. 

This approach communicates to Maddie that she is capable and able.  It instills an understanding that she can do things and other people respect that she is capable.

It is too easy to surround a child with significant special needs with the message, "You are helpless.  You need to be taken care of.  You are incapable."  Those messages do not help anyone.

I think it is critical to children who are medically fragile or have significant special needs to be nurtured to be doers with some control over their world.  And that depends largely on how their caregivers interact with them. 

Next weeks blog post will be "5 Ways to Teach Your Child Who He or She Is"

What do you think the words and interactions with your child are teaching him or her?