Living with Special Needs Children
By:
Dr. Noel Swanson
Listed below are concerns from parents of
special needs children:1. Do children with special needs have the
same understanding of cause and effect,
reward and punishment, as other children?
The fact is that this is not an issue. No
matter what type of living being you are we
all have an interest in reward versus
punishment to some level. Think about the
bottom of the food chain such as a
cockroach. Cockroaches despise the light and
live to move around in the dark hours of the
night. They associate good feelings with
dark and bad feelings with light. They might
not think about it, but rather just feel it
based on experience and instinct.
Turn on the lights and the roach goes
scuttling for darkness. In a very basic
sense, light = punishment and darkness =
reward. The behavior of escaping from light
to dark is rewarded, and so is repeated.
Roaches don't have a memory and can't be
instructed like we can. Canines can be
instructed because they have a wonderful
memory. They know, for example, if they hear
the word "stay" they will stay in place in
order to receive a treat or reward.
The higher you go up on the food chain, the
better their memory can be. Interest in time
and the improvement of analytical skills
appears. When these attributes increase, you
need to vary the intensity of the rewards
and punishments to have any effect.
How do you know what you can use? Simple.
You start with a good guess, and then
experiment. You implement a system of
rewards and or punishments to modify a
behavior (exact details of how to do this
are in the book), and see what happens. If
the behavior changes, the carry on! If it
does not, then one of two things applies:
a) your rewards and punishments systems did
not have big enough meaning in your child's
life or
b) they were unable to make a connection
between the behavior and the consequent
reward or punishment. For example, if the
time interval between behavior and
consequence is too long, then the younger or
less able child may not be able to connect
the two.
So, when you see that your system is not
working. You step back, have a think about
it, modify it, and then try again.
Ultimately you will either succeed in
changing the behavior, or you won't. Which
leads to the second question:
You have tried all of the things you can
think of and your child's behavior hasn't
budged. What do you do? For example, let's
say your child had PDD. You are required to
complete a few hours of physical therapy
with your child each day. However, your
child doesn't want to do the physical
therapy.
Richard has read the book. He has
experimented with just about every reward,
punishment, incentive scheme he can think
of. He has tried to make the therapy more
exciting and fun. But despite all of these
efforts, half the time the therapy just does
not get done.
What can you do about this? You have two
choices including:
a. Richard could get stressed and worried
about this. He can berate himself for
failing to get his child to do the therapy
he needs, and he can continue the search for
some magic wand that will somehow motivate
Tim to do those exercises. Or,
b. You stop and evaluate your situation. You
take a deep breath and look at things
practically and logically. You are okay with
the fact that half the time the physical
therapy session may not happen, but this is
still an improvement from how much physical
therapy your child was accomplishing last
year.
Which is better?
The problem with (a) is that it produces
STRESS. And stress is unhealthy and
unproductive. It means you are less
effective, more irritable, and less fun. But
it doesn't produce any better results!
Sometimes you just have to learn to live
with the fact that your child may never be
totally motivated to do the physical
therapy. It's sad, but true. It is better to
work with what you have then cry about not
achieving perfection.
Therefore, you should pay attention to your
child's specific needs. Strive to define
success off of what you are provided with
and not an ideal. When you do this, you will
alleviate stress and the results you want
will happen. If things still don't improve
would you want to have: a) 1/2 performance
and we are all upset? b) 1/2 performance and
we are all feeling good?
The key point is to not try to compete to an
ideal level when it might not be a realistic
goal.
Article Source:
http://www.uberarticles.com/articles
Do your kids play you
up? Then you should really take a look at
Dr. Noel Swanson's excellent website packed
full of
parenting advice There are also articles
on children's
special educational needs that are worth
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