Pros and Cons of Abilities Awareness Week

Day 11:  31 for 21 Blog Challenge! 

Sydney’s school is having Abilities Awareness this week.  I’m not big on these things, you see, most the time the opportunity is lost in the jokes that run rampant and kids don’t learn very much, they just want the candy that is used to bribe them to participate.  I don’t want my son pitied.  So today as I handled the Fine Motor Skill Center, my job was to steer the kids through some semblance of what it might be like to struggle with fine motor skills the way Bradley does.  And I was trying to reach the fuddled brains of tweens and some teens that think that being cool is all that matters and being cool means not being different.  The goal for these kids is to get that Starburst, nothing else really was important.  And I can read kids pretty well, I know the ones that are reachable and the ones that are looking to steal as much candy as possible and be as disinterested as possible, trying to come off as cool. 

Personally, I want to see a center that lets kids learn how to say hello in sign, how to sign their names, ask someone how they are…something that allows for some kind of communication to happen between these typically developing kids and kids like mine.  I wonder what would happen if these kids were given the chance to actually “talk” to someone that can’t verbally talk back, if they would if they could?  I think we all might be surprised by the answer.

My job was to move kids through a series of tasks with socks on their hands.  They were supposed to unwrap a Starburst, button and unbutton a shirt, put on and take off a belt, and then string Fruit Loops onto shoe strings.  They laugh and they giggle, they don’t take it serious.  One kid says, “It’s too hard, I feel bad for people who can’t do this.”  And what can I do?  I start teaching. 

“It may be hard, but someone who wants to be independent will work even harder to master these skills.  And I promise you, our friends trying to learn don’t want your pity, they just want you to accept that some things may take them longer to do than you, but they will get there.”  I laid a starburst on the table and I explained to them, “Think about when you were very little, learning how to pick something up,” I used my hand in a sweeping gesture to pick it up using all fingers. “Think about how you pick something up now.” Used my Pincer grasp.  “This is the pincer grasp, and as you get older and develop this, it gets easier to pick things up and do fine motor skills.  What may have come to you already may be a skill that our friends are still trying to learn.  They will get there, but maybe not as quick as you.  But with patience on their part and patience from you and I, they will get there

I taught some of the groups some signs, some weren’t interested.  I asked if they had family or friends that might have delays, some did.  They talked about them, they wanted to tell someone about them.  One boy told me he just met a cousin five days ago he’d never met, and he was disabled, in a wheelchair, couldn’t talk.  I looked at him and asked: “Were you uncomfortable?”  And he nodded, dropping his eyes, “We’d never met.” 

“Yes, and new things are uncomfortable until they aren’t new anymore.  After more visits you won’t be uncomfortable because you will get used to being with your cousin and then you won’t care about the differences anymore, he’ll just be your cousin.”  He might be blowing me off, but his thoughtful face seemed sincere, and he was trying very hard to work all the skills at our center.   Maybe we reached him, maybe. 

Do I find value in having these centers for kids to work through.  Yes and No.   They aren’t getting any real idea of what our kids are going through, but they are taking a moment to see that some people learn differently.  Are they accepting?  Probably not.  Would we be better served by teaching them things like: what is autism? (A young girl asked the question because she didn’t know).  Maybe teach some simple signs to say Hello to our non-verbal community.  Maybe set up a station where the students learn about the true damage caused by the R-word and how they could take the pledge to end the R-word and make their community better, one person at a time.   I believe they could view, “Just Like You” the High School film project that highlights three sets of friends that have one typically developing teen and one with a developmental delay and Down syndrome.  By seeing that there is a viable relationship there, these kids can start to see that there is a worth to those with Down syndrome and Delays.  That the R-word can hurt someone, no matter what his or her IQ might be. 

One of the moms of Bradley’s classmate gets very angry and upset about the program that the County sends out to the schools.  As our family really is just getting Bradley going, I see the step of attempting to move in the direction towards Acceptance…but see it falling short at Tolerance.  My son is not a child to be tolerated, my son is his own person that deserves to be accepted for the gifts he brings to the table and accepted for who he is.  I get why her mom is saying she doesn’t care if they know if her daughter can use her pincer grasp, she wants them to say hi.  And I want that too, but if I am not willing to put my son on display to be a model of someone with a disability, if we aren’t showing then how are we going to help typically developing kids understand our kids that are different?  Is there a wrong step forward?  Maybe, and maybe there’s just a step neither forward nor back.  Maybe we are battling more than the poor choice of Abilities Awareness and need to start battling Abilities Acceptance, maybe that’s a totally different lesson we need to teach that is the exact opposite of what we are bringing to kids in this Awareness week? 

Either way, I am returning tomorrow and the next day to assist with this week of Abilities Awareness.  I am not attacking the program, but I am learning it, and even as I want to stop some of the practices, I don’t have viable options as yet, so until I do, at least someone is trying to do something.  I think the kids get more out of the answer session at the end, where they listen and ask questions of a very sweet teacher that they all seem to love.   Her sharing about her three disabled children may have helped bridge more rivers than any of the centers we helped the kids get through in that whole class.  Steps come in all areas and in all ways great and tiny.