Helping children with special needs to feel truly welcome requires some extra efforts from you. Here are ways to transform your child care to meet the needs of children with diverse abilities.
Show Before You Tell
Include pictures of people with disabilities in your activities. Make sure that these pictures show differently-abled people participating at their jobs, playing instruments, and so on. Avoid pictures which show people with disabilities sitting back and watching what others are doing.
Include Dolls with "Disabilities" in Your Play Time
You can do this simply by putting a pair of glasses or a hearing aid on a doll, or by putting braces on the legs. Dolls such as these will lead to questions which you can answer directly. "That's a hearing aid. People who wear them, like this doll, can't hear as well as others. The hearing aid helps them hear sounds better."
Invite Adults with Disabilities to Visit
Children need to see that people with disabilities have talents and interests like all capable and fulfilled people. For this reason, the disabled guest should share an interest unrelated to his/her disability, such as playing an instrument or working with wood.
Encourage Independence
It is tempting to "baby" children with disabilities and to do things for them. This does not respect the child as a capable person. Whenever possible, children should be encouraged and praised for doing things by themselves or with minimum assistance.
Adapted from: Scholastic Pre-K Today, Nov/Dec 1992
From the June, 1993, issue of The Teddy Bear.
