Embracing the Strengths of a Child with Special Needs
Parents want to wholeheartedly embrace their children with special needs. But grief, disappointment, and a child’s unusual or off-putting behaviors can create obstacles that thwart our best efforts.
Meet Harriet Cabelly and Priscilla Gilman
Today, thanks to the efforts of Harriet Cabelly, who blogs about special needs at www.rebuildlifenow.com, you can learn from Priscilla Gilman, a mom who has learned to embrace her child with special needs. Priscilla writes regularly for publications including the Daily Beast, the New York Times, and the Huffington Post, and speaks frequently at schools, conferences, and organizations about parenting, education, and the arts. She’s also the author of The Anti-Romantic Child, her memoir of raising her son Benjamin who has special needs.
Advice about How to Embrace Your Child with Special Needs
Here’s one of nugget of Gilman’s wisdom from the interview:
I always saw all the therapies and special support not as a race to fix or cure him, not as tools in an arsenal as if I was fighting a battle against autism, but rather I saw it as ‘I want to get to know my son better, I want to understand him so I can love him better and be a better mother to him.’ And so when we would do the therapy sessions, I would try to look at them as opportunities to learn more about him and to help him. Not to help him change but to help him become more comfortable with things he loved to do. For instance sound sensitivity—helping him overcome those things so he could enjoy music and go to concerts because he loves music. Not so he can become normal, whatever that is, but so these obstacles to his engagement with things he absolutely likes, would be removed.
Good stuff, huh? Harriet’s interview with Gilman is overflowing with nuggets like the one above. So hop on over to Interview with Priscilla Gilman – Embracing the Strengths of a Special Needs Child to read the whole thing.
Your Advice
What helps you embrace your child with special needs? Leave a comment to share your advice.
photo credit: www.freedigitalphotos.net
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By Jolene
Jolene Philo is the author of several books for the caregiving community. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and Amazon. See Jane Dance!, the third book in the West River cozy mystery series, which features characters affected by disability, was released in October of 2023.
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Ruth,
What a beautiful example! Your son teaches you through his intellectual prowess and you embrace those strengths of his. That’s just what we have to do more of – focus on our children’s areas of strengths because when we are grief-stricken over their ‘issues’ and what they don’t have, we fail to recognize and appreciate all that they do have.
Thank you for sharing. And I love your last line, that it’s “appropriate for him to have equal time.” It sure is!
I imbrace him in many ways. After knowing him for 18 years, I have a pretty good feel for what is just him, what are his strengths and what are his challenging ares many that might not improve much more. I embrace him in his intellect. Allowing him to explain things that are so simple to him but totally elude me, like physics, science fiction literacy themes or calculus. In the social skills area, I’ve been doing the same to him for years. It’s probably appropriate for him to have equal time.