If yours was, or perhaps wasn’t particularly wonderful, I hope you are still taking great pride in being a mother.
As Charles Dickens said, “Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues—faith and hope.
Speaking of faith and hope, I have been fortunate to be home this past week and to be able to observe a mother to be. From my window I can look out over my little pond and I have been able to watch a mother Mallard duck sit on her nest. It has been raining almost nonstop and to make it really unpleasant, we’ve been getting hail and serious winds with temperatures here in the Utah mountains still dropping down close to the 30’s at night.
It’s now been five days since I spotted this very well-hidden and camouflaged hen and as many days since her mate has been absent. I believe the colorful drake stays away so as not to attract attention to their nest. So, there she is all alone, through the cold and the rain, day in and day out. I have not seen her leave her nest for even a minute. I’m wondering if she will remain on the nest throughout the 28-30 days I believe it will take for her to hatch her ducklings. Tough job! But, you Moms know it’s a tough job and I’m sure a lot tougher on many days than you would wish, but you hang in there.
Here’s to you—all you moms who make my job possible, because we can’t really do anything except through you. So on behalf of all your children who perhaps can’t say it yet and those who can, but don’t really yet understand what you have done and are doing for them, I’m going to do it for them.
Most parents ask this question of themselves and others. Many struggle with trying to answer it themselves, while others will seek answers from “experts.” The real answer to this question isn’t possible until we have a vision and begin to manage a diverse range of variables, without which we cannot answer the question with any degree of certainty.
What is my child’s potential—what can he or she achieve?
Every parent asks this question and those with rather typical kids have a fair and generally narrower range of expectations and possible outcomes and can attempt to factor in a variety of variables that they plan and hope to control. Parents of typical children can be very proactive, have a vision and try to pick the best of available schools and or academic opportunities, stay on top of their children’s progress and development, etc. and limit the involvement of too many people and avoid those who do not share their vision. The stronger the vision and the more proactive the parents, generally the narrower the range of variables and the better the odds that the parents can help their children achieve success. Such parents try to insure that everyone who is involved with their children share their vision. Children with less proactive or involved parents who go through their childhoods and “educations” without a clear vision, direction or someone in control are exposed to a greater diversity of variables and their futures are thus much more in question.
Families with special needs children tend to ask themselves and most anyone else who might venture an opinion the same question, “What is my child’s potential, what can he or she achieve?” Parents of special needs children tend to not trust their instincts and often abdicate the vision to others, often many others. The answer your neighbor on the other side of the fence might provide is unfortunately likely to be no better than that of the “experts.” Why? Because the more issues your child has the greater the “experts” perspectives are to be negatively influenced by the previous achievements or lack of such, of those with similar labels or issues and the immensely diverse range of variables. All of this tends to result in very low conservative visions. So, how do we begin the process of managing the variables? We do it by aiming high, by creating a vision, by being proactive. One huge factor that is under our control is what and how much do we as parents and to what degree we direct, control and create opportunities and to what degree we limit the number of participants who do not share our vision.
If our children’s potentials are left to the blowing winds and increasingly diverse range of variables produced by the ever-increasing numbers of educators, therapists, doctors, etc. who come in contact with our children, each acting on their vision and trying to modifying our vision, we decrease the odds that we can predict or positively impact our children’s futures. The diverse range of variables is just too great.
Having worked with and helped literally tens of thousands of families, I can safely say it’s very difficult for any child, but particularly a special needs child to exceed their parent’s expectations. Parents need a vision—the vision drives the directions, maintains parental control and limits variables. Parents, who do not have a vision or those who except low expectations simply are not as proactive as they need to be and are not taking control over the diverse range of variables. Give me a driven parent who maintains their vision any day.
As parents, as we contemplate the futures of our children we all face a diverse range of variables, but if we create the vision, take control, become empowered and proactive and “yes,” the more we apply the right stuff, the right way the more we begin to control variables and can not only imagine the future, but actually start to create it.
Today I’m in London—actually in Eton—next door to the magnificent and spectacular Windsor Castle. Eton is the home of the very historic and very famous Eton College, which is a vibrant, progressive, and exceptional school even today. My very wonderful and gracious hosts here gave me a tour of the school yesterday, and it was truly an amazing, profound, and rather humbling experience. Eton was established in 1440 by King Henry the VI, a teenager, and today’s students are not only learning in the same classrooms, but sitting on the very same benches as the first students who were here in 1440! I actually saw Shelley’s name carved into a wall, along with the names of centuries of past students. How cool it is that the students can carve their names into the buildings to mark their passage throughout history! An incredible school and an amazing historic and beautiful town.
Today was a day full of new families and new children. As always, it’s wonderful meeting new kids and starting them along a road to hopefully a bright future. As I meet with new families, they all to some degree feel like they are stepping off a cliff, and they hope they are going to float up on a cloud into new and wonderful futures with their children and are not falling into a great black hole—scary! For the parents of our NACD kids, the journey is often difficult, and working day in and day out they are often trusting that their efforts are going to pay off and their children will progress. But the day to day task of doing program with children who would often rather not is difficult, and the faith can wear a little thin at times.
As I was finishing up my evaluations for the day and was taking a moment to reflect on the day’s new batch of parents and children, I received an email from one of our moms with an attached note that her daughter, Aliya, had written last night and taped to her mom’s bathroom mirror.
As her mom said, “If you had told me a few years ago that I would have received a note like this, I would never have believed it! To initiate this on her own is amazing! School days are so pleasant around here now! Just so thrilled!” At the end she asked if I had noticed all the exclamation points. I not only noticed them, I felt every one of them!
Aliya’s mom gave me permission to share her note. I trust it will bring some of you hope and bring a smile to your faces and perhaps even a little tear to your eye as it did mine.
– Bob
Hi there,
This is the note I found taped to my bathroom mirror last night. Aliya is thanking me for chores and is thankful for this family!! Yesterday she told me, “You know the day goes much better when I obey.” Feeling blessed today!!
Thanks to your work and support—I’m receiving these nuggets!
Yesterday I saw Amy, a bright and delightful six-year-old girl. While I was speaking to her mom, Amy walked over eating from a bag of Cheetos. I looked at Mom and softly said, “You know those aren’t good for her, right?” (I thought that Amy had been ignoring us, but I was wrong.)
Amy’s mouth drops open and wide-eyed she looks at her mom and says incredulously:
“Soooooo—why do you give these to me?”
Soooooo parents, why do you give such things to your kids?
Our children trust us. They trust us to take care of them and taking care of them includes making good choices and at times, hard choices. One of those choices is providing them with and teaching them about good nutrition. Amy’s assumption was that her mother wouldn’t give her anything harmful. Amy’s mom, a really super mom, certainly represents the majority of parents. Parents that often find it easier to give children what’s easy and convenient, what they like and to be truthful we like making our kids happy—but at what price?
Here is another video from Japan talking about how to help move children along the road to independence and become a successful adult. In my previous post I talked about how children learning to take care of their personal and self-help needs and learning to be responsible for chores is vital to their development and independence. Now let’s look a step further.
From everything I can discover, our country is a much safer place than it was 50 years ago; however, because of national media attention most people feel it’s getting more dangerous every year. We as parents are being pressured to feel and believe that the world is really dangerous and that our children shouldn’t be permitted to play alone in their front yards, let alone walk down the street to a park, or heaven forbid, walk to school by themselves. Times certainly are a-changing.
I grew up right outside of the city limits of Philadelphia in a rather typical 1950’s suburban neighborhood. Our house happened to sit on a highway, US route #1, a very busy road that happened to sit at the intersection of another busy road. I prided myself in my ability to wake in the middle of the night from a deep sleep at the sounds of tires squealing and get to my window in time to see the cars actually crash. My sister and I walked to school along and across that highway for one mile every day, starting with kindergarten, as did every other kid in the area.
At the age of eleven I started a snow removal business, having contracted with many of the families and a few businesses in the area and having hired a couple of my friends to work for me. On school nights if it was supposed to snow, I would stay up and wait for the snow and would hit the streets as soon as it started coming down, often working from two or three am until it was time to go to school. My parents were proud of my initiative, and if they had anxiety over my being out on the streets in the middle of the night, I never knew it. I suspect they might have had a twinge or two of apprehension; but if they did they kept it to themselves.
Before I start getting hate mail, let me say that I’m not suggesting that you let your kids go out by themselves and roam the streets in the middle of the night, or that you have your seven-year-old daughter take a couple of trains by herself though a busy city to get to school. But I am saying that as parents we need to look for opportunities for our kids to do things independently and take some journeys.
I’ve had a number of occasions during my meetings with kids and their parents to challenge and push the parents. When traveling to our chapters, I often do evaluations out of suites in hotels and more often than not, Embassy Suites hotels. Most of these hotels have fewer than ten floors of rooms built around a central atrium, with glass front elevators at one end. Riding the elevators is often the highlight of the child’s trip. While working out of these hotels, I have on many occasions encouraged a parent with a teenage child with perhaps Down syndrome or one on the autism spectrum or even learning or attention problems to let their child go down to the lobby and retrieve the other parent. Often the suggestion is met with shock. The child wasn’t shocked, the parent was. To put this into perspective, because of the layout of the hotel you could watch the child go down the hallway, into and down the elevator, and even look down and watch them in the lobby. It should also be mentioned that during the day when we are doing the evaluations, the hotel is pretty much empty. As many times as I have done this, I’ve never had a child have the least bit of an issue. They listened to the directions, followed the directions, and just did it. The problem wasn’t with the child; it was with the parent.
We need to give our children the opportunity to do things independently to teach them independence. Independence teaches confidence, self-reliance, and initiative, all very important, very necessary lessons for all children, whether typical or special needs.
Lest you think that I just talk the talk and don’t walk the walk, my son, Laird, who now at 27 basically runs daily operations at NACD, was hauling 40-pound bales of hay to our Scottish Highland cattle first thing in the morning, in the dark, through the snow, often at temperatures below zero by himself at the age of 5. He didn’t need to be pushed or prodded or given candy as a reward, it was simply one of his jobs and he was proud to do it. He is better for the experience.
As parents, each of us needs to look at our children and evaluate their capabilities, determine what challenges they can handle, and let them go. It’s part of our job.
I hope you all had a wonderful Mother’s Day.
Most parents ask this question of themselves and others. Many struggle with trying to answer it themselves, while others will seek answers from “experts.” The real answer to this question isn’t possible until we have a vision and begin to manage a diverse range of variables, without which we cannot answer the question with any degree of certainty.
