When a classroom's four walls is the real learning disability

Unschooling or free schooling children has been an increasingly popular approach to education adopted by parents/caregivers  who want their youngsters to be unencumbered by the constraints of 4 walls and a rigid set of ‘one size fits all’ drilled learning. In the formative years of my own education, I’d have been a perfect free schooling student. 

I hold the view that traditional, sit down and sit still education of children is effectively ruining them, squashing their creativity and setting the stage of a host of often lifetime problems. Yes, problems. Children are being stifled from experiencing the world on their own terms and at their own pace.

With regard to free schooling, my niece, whose young son lives with autism, had this to say — “one big issue with that is that parents of special needs kids are already exhausted from the care their kids require and their resources are spent. Not to say that it [free schooling]isn’t often/most times the superior option but that there is little support available.”

That needs to change if children who learn differently, are differently able and just don’t seem to fit are to thrive in any sort of formal setting.  Fully appreciating the learning styles of the 'differently able' is critical if they are to succeed in any aspect of life. Many children with deficiencies to mobility as well as to intellect would be far better served learning 'life skills' from the get-go, with the requisite traditional lessons interwoven. Making learning practical and fun also reduces teacher stress.

I find the term learning disability is used  inappropriately, as some children by virtue of an inability to discern social cues and learn and know how to behave in social situations are not at all learning disabled. Think about it.

Children who don't fit the 'standard' learning model may be ideal candidates for being free schooled or unschooled; tear down those walls and allow them to flourish out in the world, up to their elbows in dirt, pulling fresh veggies out of the ground, examining trees and bark and leaves, oh my! There’s a reading lesson lurking in that garden. Do you see it? A math lesson. Think! A salad to be made. Another math lesson.

Reading and writing and arithmetic can be learned in any number of ways that don't involve sitting with 25-30 other children in a closed space with an adult talk, talk, talking! It's time to get serious about thinking outside the box.

Unschooling/free schooling rages against traditional thinking on what kids with learning disabilities, and particularly autism, need in order to learn. I say, rage away.

Even in mistakes, there is learning. We all make mistakes; that’s part of the human condition. Must the mistakes of adults continue to be obstacles to a child’s learning. If one approach is not working, try another. Don’t punish them with negative reporting because they ‘don’t get it’. 

The medically fragile child also benefits from the unschooling/free schooling model because they aren’t stressed by an environment that compromises their physical and emotional health. A child who is relaxed in the spaces in which learning takes place will learn and will, with the passsage of time, be able to generalize knowledge. A huge plus, particularly for children with autism who are often thought to be totally lost to and in the world. We need to see what they see.

Free schooling or unschooling allows for the child to catch up on aspects of development that may have eluded him. Trying to push grade specific academic requirements at him because he’s of a certain age is stifling as well as punitive. Focusing on nurturing development on a day to day basis rather than an endless parade of meetings with teachers and others about how they can best meet his needs is time lost. Practical tools of daily living should be the major part of the ‘teaching plan’.

Children who are differently able, who also learn differently can become lifelong learns if the element of enjoyment, of joy, is woven into each day’s adventure. Pace is everything. Rushing children through the curriculum to meet the teacher’s plan is not effective and it never will be effective. Time to park that bus.

Our lives are in constant flux and on a daily basis, we’re all learning how to cope and deal with change. Isn’t that what life and learning is all about? 

Carla MacInnis Rockwell is a freelance writer and disability rights advocate living outside Fredericton, NB with her aging Australian silky terrier and a rambunctious Maltese. She can be reached via email at carmacrockwell@xplornet.ca 

Aging in place with a since birth disability has its challenges

       Decades ago, cerebral palsy was considered a ‘children’s disease’. Today there are many living with the disorder reaching ages into the 70s and 80s. Cerebral palsy is not a disease at all but a fixed neurological insult with the secondary implications often setting the stage for outcomes, day by day, week by week, and year by year. By clinical diagnosis I ‘have’ spastic diplegic cerebral palsy, affecting the legs and concurrently the spine. Implications of aging have been making inroads for several decades, with spinal stenosis, osteoarthritis of the thoracic spine, degenerative disc disease and fibromyalgia being notable among them. Then there’s the wonky vision and quirky heart. 

Seniors such as I, growing old with cerebral palsy, may face a variety of challenges, many of which can be mitigated with the help of professional in-home caregivers. With proper supports, we are able to age in place in safety and in comfort. Comfort and familiarity with spaces is critical to someone like me who has spent decades fine-tuning skills to function independently — from moving a vacuum cleaner from one room to another to carrying a bucket of water without sloshing it all over the place.

We’re not unlike our age appropriate peers with regard to growing old, sharing many of the same issues. As example, I have been coping with increased pain in the knees, hips, neck and back — for me, spasticity management is critical so that my daily routines aren’t compromised by pain-induced stumbles or falls. So far so good, and ‘doctor drug’ free.

Decreased mobility often contributes to the higher risk of falls as does diminished bone density and muscle strength. We who are aging with since birth mobility disorders often have to reassess how we will conduct the business of our lives should we need to use devices and aides like canes, crutches, walkers, wheelchairs or mobility scooters. It’s important to have conversations with your primary care physician to formalize a plan of in-home care. I know I would benefit from daily physiotherapy, drawing on the regimen that was undertaken with me when I was a small child. Restoring muscle memory and tweaking patterned movement would allow me to stay on top of things as I age in place, on my own, home alone.

I’m fortunate, while living on my own, to be able to prepare meals and maintain my home with regard to daily and weekly housecleaning, relying on outside help very infrequently.

Proper nutrition is an issue for the aging person, particularly those who live alone  without benefit of frequent visitors, whether family, friends or neighbours. Bulk cooking and baking has been part of my MO for decades and it’s not likely to change. Perhaps seniors in your world might consider organising baking and cooking parties and share the stews, pot pies, soups and salads of their labours. It would be an ideal way to ensure healthy eating on a daily basis. As well, pooling resources reduces costs and that’s always a good thing.

Seniors with pre-existing disability may need more supports available to stave off the beast of depression that tends to invade the emotional spaces of the aging person, as isolation is a significant concern for seniors who live on their own without daily or frequent access to family or friends to ‘check in’. For the senior with disability beyond the implications of aging and what that means in terms of health and wellness, there’s the reality that social connection tends to diminish with age and it’s not always by choice. 

Aging in place can present a few unique challenges for older adults. Some require only part-time assistance with housework or meal preparation, while others are living with serious illnesses and benefit more significantly from receiving live-in home care. Care plans are based on individual needs.

It’s critical for the aging person to accept the reality that the body does experience wear and tear, joints do ache, balance does change and more care and attention has to be taken. The aging person must also accept that the living spaces may need modifications to ensure ongoing personal safety. 

In many ways, I’m at an adavantage, having come into the world with challenges to mobility that impact how and where I can live safely. Adapting my square peg existence to the round hole world has been a lifelong adventure with lots of interesting and often amusing experiences. So long as I can ‘walk this way’ without slamming into the refrigerator, life is good.

Carla MacInnis Rockwell is a freelance writer and disability rights advocate living outside Fredericton, NB with her aging Australian silky terrier and a rambunctious Maltese. She can be reached via email at carmacrockwell@xplornet.ca 

How would you feel if your personal space was invaded?

The recent story about Amanda Hoyt and her son who lives with autism got my attention, particularly when I read at how shabbily her child was treated while on an mall outing with a respite worker. The boy had a ‘meltdown’ that lasted for over an hour and it was videotaped by teenage girls. Did they forget to engage their brains? Did their parents fail to teach them about compassion? Those lessons are often learned when a child first starts ambulating and communicating. Clearly, those young women had too much time on their hands and should be ashamed of themselves. Alas, that would require an engaged moral compass. Yup, I’m annoyed!

The stressors of parenting or being a sibling to a child with challenges impacts on everyone within the family dynamic and can range from very mild, to the stage where one becomes physically ill. With the traditional role of women changing over the decades, there remains constant a mother’s love for her child, and it is often the mother who is the primary care giver; she is the go-to for all the day to day happenings in her child’s world. Amanda is that person for her son.

Amanda Hoyt’s hope for a calm outing for her child so that she could enjoy some alone/decompressing time was blown to smithereens because of the thoughtlessness of those who should know better.

What about the people who stood by and watched the scene unfold; probably parents themselves, pointing and sniggering. Both easy to do with no thought given to consequences, at least not for themselves. They got what they wanted -  a laugh at the expense of a child. A point and stare at the expense of a caregiver. The child got more stress; his caregiver got more stress. 

When respite comes, the mother or father or other caregiver can only hope their own quality time will not be weighted down with wondering how their child is doing, off somewhere else with someone else, such as Amanda’s son was.

  The individuals who videotaped Amanda’s child and invaded his personal space, and the people who pointed and stared and offered comment about what a bad mother Amanda must be or why the child cannot be controlled should be ashamed of themselves. In addition to having no idea about how stressful it is to raise a child with challenge, they also demonstrated a common trait amongst them - they’re bullies.

I wholeheartedly agree with Ms. Hoyt’s assertion that her child is not a freak show and she has every right to be a harsh critic of those who victimized her child with their unfounded comments and totally inappropriate glaring. Recording the scene was totally out of line, only escalating the stress for a child in crisis, not to mention what it did to the adult caregiver trying to defuse the situation.

I speak from experience when I say that being stared at while struggling to walk without stumbling, climbing up steps where there was no railing and hearing people whisper about my own mother as we made our way on the streets and into shops in Fredericton back in the late 50s and 60s had impact. I felt the stress. My mother felt the stress.

Growing up in small town New Brunswick from the late 50s through the early 70s, it was sink or swim with no mainstreaming. I survived. As an adult, I continue to be victimized by all manner of people who failed to look beyond their own prejuidices. When out and about, whomever I’m with is often asked what I want. I’m spoken to in a manner that suggests I’m deaf and intellectually lagged. Disrespectful!

Asking whether I’m related to so and so - ‘he’s in a wheelchair, too,’ continues to amuse me. The kicker, though, was several years ago during a mall outing when I met a fellow wheelchair user, then a student at STU. A couple of old ladies approached and asked if we were sisters! 

As a mother, Amanda has to cope with how people treat her son. His level of awareness aside, he does know when people are staring at him. Just stop it!

I, as still uprightly mobile old gal aging with cerebral palsy know full well when folks are pointing and sniggering. It happens less when I’m in my chair than using crutches as the latter is very visually awkward to watch.

Regardless, no one should be abusing another with such a display as was demonstrated by the teenage girls victimizing Amanda Hoyt’s son. If they boast about their exploits and are still under parental control, perhaps the adults in the room will do the right thing. Take that cellphone away!

Carla MacInnis Rockwell is a freelance writer and disability rights advocate living outside Fredericton, NB with her aging Australian silky terrier and a rambunctious Maltese. She can be reached via email at carmacrockwell@xplornet.ca 

Are you the bully in your home teaching your children how it's done?

“N.B.-born Dad beams with pride as son wins gold,” was the message delivered in the headline of a recent Brunswick News story about the Olympics. A father’s pride at his son’s accomplishment is a most shareworthy and noteworthy sentiment; as Canadians and as New Brunswickers we can own it, too. That was my thinking.

Apparently, my view was not shared by a few who posted comments about the article, immediately picking it apart and resorting to name calling of fellow posters. Why is that? What did they accomplish by being nasty? Is that their immediate ‘go-to’ when they don’t agree with something? Do they have children? Grandchildren? Are those young people witness to such bullying behaviour?

I then wondered if they conducted themselves in a similar fashion in the workplace, berating colleagues without a single thought to consequences. Are they the ones at a restaurant who loudly criticize wait staff for delivering a cold meal? Were they the parents at youth hockey swearing at coaches and berating their own child who was trying his best to play a game he loved? How long will he love it with a parent who will never be satisfied?

Are any of the authors of those unnecessary comments also motorists who experience bouts of road rage when things aren’t going as they want them to? Bullying behaviour does have consequences. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But just you wait! 

Just you wait until you get a call from your third grader’s teacher to inform you that you must attend a meeting about ‘an incident’. Your child pushed another so hard that he fell and struck his head, knocked out cold.

The bullying parent may immediately seek to blame the other child for upsetting his own, failing to see that the aggressive behaviour was observed/learned somewhere, somehow. A youngster constantly exposed to bullying behaviour in the home is bound to carry it into his daily interactions, in the classroom, on the playground at recess, at the park, within organised sports like hockey and soccer. When consequences come, the child bully is caught off guard, not expecting to be benched, sent home, or suspended from school. 

Allowed to continue, yes, allowed, the behaviour reaches the point where the child is a teenager and appears before youth court for vandalism. Is the parent present, muttering under his/her breath about how unfairly their child is being treated?

In recent weeks, the news consuming public was witness to supposed grown-ups bullying teenagers in the wake of the Florida school shooting. My first thought was “how dare they!” Those politicians and newscasters and others going after young people with their venomous rhetoric clearly failed the quality control test for compassion. What seems to be lost on them, if they are parents, is that their children are up close and personal with such abusive behaviour. That alone should be enough of a wake-up call for them to cease and desist. Who are they going to blame five, ten, fifteen years down the road when their little darling gets him/herself into all manner of trouble?

The young people who recently gathered together in Washington and elsewhere at rallies to draw attention to the need for stricter gun control are our future leaders. Those currently in power need to pay attention and get real. When I read and about certain newscasters and others berating them and their efforts, I was stunned. The half-baked apology issued by one  is just that — half-baked. It’s meaningless given she only apologised to get herself out of a jam; too little, too late.

Bullying goes online with some parents actually stalking young people perceived to have maligned their own child in some way. It involves saying mean things, putting unflattering graffiti on someone’s social wall or sharing pictures with others of a person in compromising situations. Indeed, cyberbullying is such a problem that there was a case in which an adult woman harassed a teenager so much that the child went into depression and committed suicide.

Parents who bully may try to control their children’s online presence by being nasty to youngsters in their child’s social network, then it spirals into a free-for-all with parents attacking parents. One, two, then three red flags!

The time has come for parents to consider unplugging themselves and their children and getting reacquainted as a family. While listening and hearing, have a conversation about bullying and what it really means. Parents and children may learn things about each other that will strengthen their relationships going forward.

Carla MacInnis Rockwell is a freelance writer and disability rights advocate living outside Fredericton, NB with her aging Australian silky terrier and a rambunctious Maltese. She can be reached via email at carmacrockwell@xplornet.ca