Parenting A Special Needs Child

Do you ever feel you walk alone, handcuffed to an insolvable problem?

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed and hopeless before the challenge of nurturing our wonderful child.

She needs me SO much SO often. Sometimes an awful sensation of stuckness grips me—that I will be forever stuck in this treadmill of solving basic problems that will never  improve, never get better. EVER.

(And of course there are lovely moments as well, but that is not the topic of this blogpost.)

We are fortunate in our world that some people are filled with unlimited positive energy to uplift us and guide us. Such a person is Professor Reuven Feuerstein (pictured above), a cognitive psychologist (that means he studies how we learn and think) who has devoted his life to finding ways to work miracles on unpromising conditions most scientists gave up on ever improving: attachment disorder, fetal alcohol syndrome, autism, down syndrome, brain damage, etc.

He has researched and scientifically proven that our brains can constantly develop—even after being born deficient or after suffering damage. WE ARE NOT AS STUCK AS YOU MIGHT THINK. Our children can develop beyond what we see at the moment.

Below is a concise transcript of the video that follows, in which Professor Feuerstein urges us all: Believe you can overcome! If you do—you will create amazing results!

In practical terms for us, parents of special needs children the message is this: Believe that you can constantly improve your child’s functioning—and you will discover ways to improve it. AND IT WILL IMPROVE.

My daughter was lucky to have a teacher who studied with Professor Feuerstein in Israel. I can attest to the positive effect it had on her learning abilities.

Here is the transcript and the video:

“Belief is generated by a need.

You, the parent, have the need:  if you need to help your child you begin to believe you can change their disability. And if you believe—you begin to achieve.

Human beings are modifiable. Not only their behavior can be modified, but also their neurosystem—marvelously, miraculously!  Actually, the behavior which we IMPOSE upon our brain really SHAPES the hardware of the brain.

Neuroscience today support this view: we can help a person’s brain no matter what their genetic condition or age.  Even severely limited children can be significantly modified. More than we previously believed.

In the past we didn’t believe we could do it—so we didn’t!  But once we believed we could do it and we tried—we achieved very meaningful results.”

You can visit Professor Feuerstein’s website here.

How often do you think, “Oh no! Not another Mess up!”

Does your special needs child  get into frequent disagreements and start a fight? Don’t you wish you had a frequent flyer ticket to get out of there!  How often can a fight escalate into kids not talking to each other for a while? It can happen all the time even with regular children, so it doesn’t take much to notice that kids with poor communication skills can get into daily upsets where they misunderstand things and are misunderstood themselves.     How draining that can be on a daily basis.

My child will often describe what she emotionally feels and imagines, but not necessarily what is going on in reality. That’s when the arguing begins, as her friends try to explain their side of the story and she can’t quite get it.

That’s where aware parents enter the scene. We know our kids best. We can help  explain things to smooth over the upset with friends, and clarify to the parent’s of the other children when things get really entangled.

With a parent as  “helpful communicator”, problems can be solved in half the time.
Look at this video clip and tell me if you agree with this important role of a parent. Is that our job or should the kids sort it out themselves?

If you like the videos below you can see a different video of my Number One Calming Technique right here.