Stealing from Kids

That story makes me think of the girl in the Secret Garden, who couldn’t even dress herself at, what, 8 years old? Very sad.

I remember at the parents’ kindergarten orientation session (kids go to junior kindergarten at age 4 and many schools have full day, alternate day school at this age), a mother saying that she still fed her son his lunch. What would he do when he got to kindergaren? One of the teachers said, “I am BEGGING you to please stop now. Please. He’s old enough to feed himself.”

Don’t kid yourself. I teach high school (all boys) and I regularly see Moms coming into the school, particularly at the start of the year, opening and setting up the locker, getting books from book store and the like. These are 15 & 16 year old boys… how… emasculating? Maybe a strong word, but that is how I feel. My daughter has ADD-ADHD up the wazoo, but she would rather cut off her right hand than allow me to run her like that. Rightly so.

Amen! Just, Amen!!! It’s stealing our children’s competence! My son could crawl up into his car seat and buckle himself in by the time he was 18 months old and then I would just check it and tighten if necessary, usually not necessary. His best friend was the same age and would go limp like a noodle as soon as I opened the door because his mother wouldn’t let him touch *anything*. It just progressed from there. My son is 16, cooks all his own meals, does his own laundry, is responsible for his own schedule and if I died tomorrow he would be perfectly fine. And we get along great! He loves to think of new things to cook and try stuff out. I don’t refuse to cook for him, we just eat different things. He’s a 16 year old athlete and I’m an old lady. If I ate what he eats I’d weigh 300 lbs and if he ate what I eat he would fall over from lack of calories.

I think really it comes down to this – most parents I know these days make their decisions based on what relieves their anxiety instead of what gives the kid the best future. The problem with anxiety is that it never diminishes by accommodating it, it just picks something else to land on. Thus the ever spiraling hysteria. The question is always – what gives my son the best life, not what would make me feel more comfortable.

A friend told me, with approval, of her son’s third grade teacher (mostly eight-year-old children), who insisted from the beginning that if the kids forgot their homework or their lunches they were not allowed to call home for them. One bad grade or one missed meal would not do any harm, and were a very effective reminder that such things were the child’s responsibility, not the parent’s. She said her son gained a lot of self-confidence and responsibility that year.

Would that even be allowed today? My daughter’s school had a policy of providing lunch for children who forgot theirs, which I always thought a mistake. There are very, very few children for whom missing one meal has any greater consequence than a slightly uncomfortable feeling — great for reinforcing the lesson.

This is why there are so many 9 and 10 year olds who can’t tie their shoes.

**most parents I know these days make their decisions based on what relieves their anxiety instead of what gives the kid the best future.**

Excellent, excellent statement.

ha. I just blogged about this thing this week. I found several sources about teaching children independance and how important it is.

I found that I *used* to included my baby/toddler with helping cooking, cleaning, folding etc but as I had more kids somewhere along the line it just became *easier* for me to do it all. I’ve had a revelation recently about how much more things my 10 and 8 year old need to do. A lazy mother is one that does everything for her children

I found this list very helpful in giving me a guideline on what children *SHOULD* be able to do at certain ages. It truely shocked me, as I dont even like to do somethings on the list they suggest 11 year olds should know how to do!!

I totally recommend this list if you want your children to become more accountable and learn to be independant

http://printable.tipjunkie.com/chores-at-what-age/

When our boy first started going to preschool, he wouldn’t let the teachers take him out of the car. Every day I had to park and walk him in.

After months of this, I finally realized that he’d been ready to do it on his own for a couple of weeks, and that I was the one keeping it going. Sometimes it’s hard to recognize when we are doing things for ourselves and not our kids.

I like those chores in the link. Unfortunately, I can’t take my kids with me when I vote anymore because voting is entirely by mail in my state.

I would have my kids load the dishwasher, except that it is old and prone to falling when fully loaded. I don’t want to deal with the tears (theirs or mine) when dishes get broken. It is easier if I break them myself.

But, that said, my husband never had to pick his clothes up off the floor as a child, or put his dishes in the sink after dinner. It drives me nuts because I came from a family that everyone, male and female were expected to do those things. I want my kids to have as stress free of marriages as they can!

At our school parents are not allowed in the classrooms after the first week of school. Kids from kindy on up take their lunches out of their backpacks, put them in the lunch wagon, hang up their jackets and backpacks and go sit down.

They are all perfectly capable individuals!

I like how the German schools do it!

This is why my boys are in Montessori. One of their greatest joys is to show me something new they’ve learned to do on their own. I can’t imagine stealing that from them.

Reading over that list of chores, some seem too early, and others make me think, “Really? You’d wait that long?” It’s still very helpful and I’ll be using it to try out new things with my kids and find out if they can do them.

I work at a middle school (6,7,8 grades) and a student today asked me if it was 9:00am yet. I told the student, “no, it’s quarter of” and in all seriousness he asked again, “but is it 9:00 yet?” I then told him it’s 15 more minutes until 9am.

I think do we not only do too much for our kids, young and old, but we are miserably failing them at the same time.

once i had a class of 6 one year olds 3 were almost 2 i had one that was 19 months one that was 14 months and another that was 16months and my little one year olds ent to their cubbies and got their own blankets for nap time and would also get their own drinks from the refrigerator i had to put a lock on it b/c they were that independent . the parents seems to think atherwise and the youngest ones were still being handfed baby food by their former teacher and the parents though i was insane for asking that they bring in real food for their children to eat because i would not hand feed the kid when they were perfectly able to feed themselves.
Another time when i had 3 – 5 year olds i wouldn’t do anything for them they had to do for themselves and for each other my 5 year olds would tie the 3 year olds shoes b/c i taught the five year olds how and then expected them to use their knowledge to help their friends and to get in more practice. they even had to change their own pull ups if they wet them b/c the school was potty trained only so i wasn’t supossed to be changing diapers anyways i would just watch from the door and gave instructions if needed. and that was the best time i had with a group. they were even able to take them selves from the playground to the bathroom and back outside with out a police escort which seems to be the norm in childcare if one kid has to go then the whole class has to line up and go with them….
Right now im training new class of three year olds whose former teacher did everything for them including folding 20 blanket after nap and putting them perfectly into the cubbies. i let it be know that i don’t have time for that they bput away their blankets and their mats all by themselves or they ask a friend for help it makes for a less stressful transition from nap to snack…

When my son was 12 he went to a 3 week sleep away summer program. He had to learn to do laundry. I taught him before he left and he’s been doing it ever since. When my daughter turned 12 I taught her too. Now if her favorite jeans aren’t clean, guess who’s fault it is? Not mine!

They’ve been making themselves simple food for years now. When my son was 8 or 9 he had a friend over and I told them to make themselves pb&j sandwiches for lunch. His friend did not know how to spread peanut butter on a piece of bread. My son had to do it for him. When they were little I made them eat whatever I had made for dinner. Now that they’re older if they don’t like it they can make themselves something to eat.

The kids have assigned chores daily, unloading the dishwasher, vacuuming, cleaning their bathroom. Now that my son is older he helps mow the lawn, take out the trash and shovel the snow. All of these things literally take only minutes out of their day but it is a huge contribution to the family.

My job as a parent is to make them independant adults. The hover mothers need to get another hobby.

This evening we were at a restaurant and my 4-year-olds decided they wanted to go to the restroom. They decided to share the handicapped stall (we were the only ones there). When they were finished, the lock to the stall was stuck. They each tried it and then said, “Mom, we can’t open the lock.” To which I said, you are going to have to do it, because I can’t reach it from here. “Let’s climb under,” one of them suggested. To which I said, “you may NOT leave the handicapped stall locked. You have enough brains to figure out that lock.” A pause, and then I heard, “let’s try it together. Teamwork, teamwork, everybody do your share . . . .” And they opened the door, and were pretty proud of it, too.

I think it’s interesting how a lot of people are talking about tying shoes. I learned in 2nd grade from my friend Rose, but apparently I was taught the “wrong” way (bunny ear style) and when I was showing a neighbor mom at a party that I could tie my own shoes and did it, she scolded me for doing it wrong and retied them the “right” way.

I think it is easier for us to do things for our kids because we know how to do it quickly, or even because we’ve done it so many times it’s second nature, but that doesn’t mean our kids are doing them wrong. They just need time to figure out what works for them.

RobynHeud, interesting that you should bring that up. I taught my kids the around-the-garden tying method. My youngest mastered it at 3. But then at some point she must have been acting helpless at school, because someone showed her the 2-bunny-ears method, and that’s her method of choice now. I think she just wants to be contrary, but I don’t interfere (for now) as long as the dang shoes stay tied.

I want to edit my last sentence: “I refuse to *raise* a helpless child” is more of what I mean.

What I am doing in reality is ensuring that YOUR son doesn’t come home with bite marks all over himself because MY son can’t find his gloves.

If that’s likely to happen, that’s not on. Not even close. Your child does not belong in a situation where he is likely to attack other children without being duly provoked.

Very well written and right to the point!

So long,
Corinna

But be careful of judging too quickly; there are sometimes reasons for it that aren’t immediately apparent.

A brilliant statement, applicable to all of life. Like the woman, whose handicap is real and debilitating but invisible, being excoriated by a fellow driver for parking in a reserved parking spot. Or the waitress who seems distracted and doesn’t respond to our needs quickly enough: maybe she’s just lazy, but maybe she’s distracted by the fact that her mother was just in a serious car accident. We need to cut each other a little slack (or a lot.)

It’s great to have general discussions like this; they can be very inspiring and open doors for ourselves and our children that we didn’t think possible. The problem comes when we then pass specific judgement on particular people’s childrearing decisions. If we are good friends with the family, a gentle suggestion is not out of place, but beyond that I think we should mind our own business.

What I would expect of a school is that it fully support my decision to have my children do for themselves anything they cando for themselves, e.g. not tie their shoes for them if I’ve informed the teacher that they are fully capable of doing so. (If the teacher says she’s too busy to remember who can, and who can’t tie shoes, I’d find a new school.)

And if I were running a school, I’d expect a high level of competence of the children, but at the same time I’d welcome individual exceptions from parents who explain to me privately the need for a particular intervention. It’s wrong to handicap a whole class to accommodate the needs of one particular child, but it’s important to make exceptions as needed. We would expect to give extra help with a jacket to a child with a broken arm. The “broken arms” in a child with autism are different, but just as real.

I think the best we can do as parents is bring up our children the way we think right, to find appropriate support (e.g. a school that doesn’t undercut our policies, and a forum like this one for sharing ideas), and to bite our tongues when we see other parents whose choices do not coincide with ours. There may be extenuating circumstances; they may actually be right and have something to teach us; they may have an approach that is different from ours but also valid; they may be on the way to seeing the situation the way we do, but haven’t come as far as we have yet. Or they may be completely wrong — but even in that case, it is their business, not ours, unless we are willing to befriend and support them instead of merely passing judgement.

My daughter’s pre-k has a drop-off lane in the morning. A teacher meets the car at the door, helps the child out of the car and the child walks to their classroom by himself where he is expected to hang up his coat, wash his hands, fill up his water bottle and sign in. There are parents who still refuse to use the drop-off lane and insist on walking their kids into class and helping them hang their coats and wash their hands. We are 7 months into school. Clearly, these children know where their classroom is by now and are not going to get lost and unwittingly spend the day in the infant room (although maybe the parents would be happier if they were there).

And no, I don’t think there is any reasonable reason for this. Walking to a classroom in a daycare center does not take a skill that any 4-5 year old can’t master.

Ah gee……..
But there is so much…um, invested in that there commodity, don’tcha know –
It’s kinda sad, what with all that history about each successive generation doing better than its forebears, teddy bears, but who cares…………

There is an awful lot of angst going on out there these days about how those kiddies will do when all growed up – some 10% of the lil’ darlin’s will compete for the crumbs left them…something awful wrong with that picture.

Sure a 9 to 1 ratio sucks…when the only alternatives are big box retail and fast food flop jobs.

But when folks compensate by treating their kiddles like Grand Poobahs, Worshipped wimps, I can understand why that overfunctioning is going on, but yeah – it doesn’t fix the real problem, and it doesn’t do the kids any good.
Lord, I would have hated growing up like that.

Is necessity the mother of independent action?
I mean, we do for ourselves what no-one else is around to do for us…expanding that outward is part of human development.
“Doting” is what it is.
Why would most intelligent people figure that this eventually spoils a kid, warps their sense of self-fulfilment?
Hell.
I remember my mother declaring two things:
1 / She would not raise one more helpless man in the world who needed a female maidservant to stand behind his um, “success.”
2/ Learning to cook was something my stomach would thank me for, forever….
(and both of these items started at a pretty young age.)
So navigating through simple tasks that I was just expected to get down with reasonable instruction, was just a matter of course.
One of those simple tasks was conquering the fear of “I can’t do it!”
But wow – when you conquer that endless line of little fears, I dunno – isn’t that what self esteem is? Isn’t that where it starts?

Molly – you rock. Yer daughter oughta be a happy kid.

The most recent episode of Desperate Houswives adressed this sam issue. Mom got mad at her college aged twin boys because they never do anything for themselves. She kicked them out of the house, then realize it was her fault for never letting them do anything for themselves.

BeQui,

The right of a child to have special needs ends where the right of another child to have basic needs begins.

If an autistic or otherwise disabled child is liable to physically attack or otherwise harm other children, then yes, it should be kept in some way where it cannot. If it needs extra time, fine, extra space, fine, extra supervision, extra resources, etc, fine, fine, fine… but if it’s actually likely to attack its classmates due to unrelated circumstances in its life, it needs to be kept away from the potential victims, for everybody’s sake.

Especially in this particular instance, where we know he won’t bite kids if he knows where his gloves are. So rather than just remind him and go about her business, she should keep him home and not allow him to interact with others?

I’m not trying to have a tone, by the way, I know it’s hard to tell through typing.

I think my other comment got blocked by the spam filter because it had a link in it. Can you please approve it?

My comment is awaiting moderation, I put in too many links. Lenore, help me out please? (Sometimes my waiting moderation comments never get unmoderated, and then I am distraught.)

Ah, Sera, I’m so glad you know everything about this child’s situation, the relevant portions of the law, and the various options that the family have considered to appropriately educate their child. I’m so glad you can expound on another child’s rights when you don’t even know what steps are being taken (an aide in the classroom strikes me as the most like) to help him succeed.

Please, do keep talking.

From the time I was in 3rd grade, the teacher would punish me for not completing homework. She’d put a list of to-do’s on each child’s desk for stuff that was only 1 day late. But if it went one more day, I got swatted. This was more than enough for me to become fairly responsible. My parents were not involved.

Now, my younger sister didn’t learn so fast. She once had 21 items on her “list” and the exasperated teacher gave her 42 swats (she never hit hard enough to hurt, but it was still humiliating). My parents found this out and gave her an additional 20 swats at home (you did NOT want your parents involved in school problems in those days). She got a clue after that. Homework was not our parents’ job.

Class responsibilities should be between the student and the teacher. If a kid is having problems, perhaps the parents could arm the teacher with some acceptable consequences. I know swats won’t work nowadays, but there must be some creative alternatives out there – coupons, charts, chores, etc.

Thing is, Donna, she has a point. If you bring your kid to the door of the classroom when they’re small, that won’t do them any harm. If you like it, and they like it, and it’s permitted and not disruptive – why not?

Nobody is ever going to 100% have their kid do everything independently in every situation every time. Humans are social critters anyway.

Dropping the kid off in that way is kinda like having a lollipop. You don’t want your diet to be made of lollipops, but one now and again is probably okay. It’s when you’re also keeping them from tying their shoes (or finding an alternate solution) and not allowing them to play alone and doing their homework for them and feeding them their food that you’re getting creepy and weird. But any ONE of those things (except the feeding them, for most typical children – we never so much as fed the nieces baby food, because we were so darn lazy!) is fine and okay on its own.

“We’ve told her we hate treating her like a second (or is first) grader, but we’ve given her a year and a half to figure it out on her own”

What consequences did she face for failing to figure it out on her own? When she forgot to do her work or to turn it in, what personal loss did she suffer each and every time she forgot? Maybe it was not of any significance to her, and if there was some consquence that mattered to her, after 3 or 4 applications, it would have an effect?

Of course, the first trick is to figure out what your kids ARE capable of doing for themselves. But once you have, as for the topic of doing things for them they ARE capable of doing – I can get lazy sometimes about that, and when I do, I think of my MIL and my husband. One day when my kids were about 3 and 5, and they were clearing their plates after dinner, as they habitually do because they have been taught to do so by me, my MIL said, “Wow, I never made my boys do that. I always thought it was easier just to pick up after them.” And I said, before I could put my foot in the mouth of my rudeness, “That explains a lot.” My husband has many wonderful virtues, but picking up after himself has never been among them, and this has been a bone of contention throughout our whole marriage. After years of complaining, when nothing changed, I just gave up and picked up after him too (picked his dirty clothes up off the floor and put them in the laundry, hung his coat and tie in the closet, put away the bowl full of milk left on the kitchen table in the morning, picked his wet towel up off the floor, cleaned the toothpaste and whiskers out of the sink, etc. ). I just gave up and started doing it. I couldn’t take it not being done, and saying “Why don’t you do this??” didn’t work.

Interestingly enough, when I started training the children in these things – after about a decade of marriage – my husband started improving in them too. He got trained alongside them, I guess. I fear it would have been condescending and emasculating to have attempted to train him when we were first married, but with our kids, I suppose it can be done surreptitiously; he gets it like second hand smoke, I guess. It’s not his fault the training was skipped on him when he was a kid. But it makes me realize how hard those habits are to break in later life if you get used to someone doing for you for the first 17 years of life, and it made me realize really what a severe disservice I would be doing my kids (or at least their roomates) if I do what is simply the easier thing for me — to do it for them, rather than taking the time (and sometimes battle) to teach them to make it a habit for themselves.

Oh, I’m too impatient to wait for my comment to be approved! So I’ll repost it sans links. The links came from Ian’s Shoelace Site, you can google for it.

Ahem:

Tying your shoes with two loops or one really doesn’t matter. It makes the same type of knot. The one-loop method is faster for many people, and people tend to think of it as more grown-up, but in the end the type of knot is the same.

However, if you want to avoid excessive untied shoelaces there are two things you might want to teach your child to do:

1. Make sure you make a square knot, not a granny knot. I’m terrible at explaining this, but basically you want to picture that you’ve put a red marker line on ONE end of your shoelace. When you make your initial cross for tying your shoes the lace-end with the red marker line goes on top. Then, after you make your loop or loops, that end goes on top AGAIN.

Or, more succinctly, it’s right-over-left, left-over-right. Most people do right-over-left, right-over-left, and then their bows hang askew and come untied too easily.

This is explained with pictures here: Link removed!

2. The other thing you can do, for stubborner laces, is do a surgeon’s knot. You’re going to follow the same advice I gave above, but when you get to the point where you’re tucking the loops to make a knot you’re going to wrap them around TWICE.

Link also removed!

3. You should also be aware that round shoelaces come undone more easily than flat ones. For kids who have just learned to tie their shoes, it’s better to help them out with a lace that will, well, stay knotted.

I myself never learned to tie my shoes until I was really advanced in age, but I had fine motor issues, and also am left-handed. (Left-handedness shouldn’t be a problem, but it makes it a bit harder to learn things from righties.) So I just took the laces out of my shoes, it was as easy as that.

But even with that in mind, my jaw dropped a few months ago when I passed the grown-up with a first grade child sputtering disbelievingly that “Your teacher didn’t tie your shoes? That’s ridiculous!”

People say that I say whatever I think, and that’s not exactly true, but I did say what I was thinking then — what’s *ridiculous* is expecting the teacher to tie the shoes of 25 seven-year-old children.

Ah, Sera, I’m so glad you know everything about this child’s situation…

…Please, do keep talking.

Even though you haven’t said the words, I can certainly detect terms like “bigot”, “ignorant”, and “ableist” in your tone. Hence, I will present my views in an open and non-confrontational way, for you to consider in a similarly non-confrontational way.

I am in a certainly not unique, but probably fairly rare position, in that I have been on both sides of the coin. I have been both the student with a labeled diagnosis, and the more-or-less typical student on the receiving end of violence from special needs students.

I received my diagnosis and the label that came with it at around 14 years old – that’s halfway through high school. For the first 10 years or so of my schooling, I was assumed to be neurotypical and treated as such. Because the symptoms I had were mild until exacerbated by the cruelty of my peers, neither my parents nor any of my teachers up to that point had noticed that anything was different.

I do not speak from personal experience alone. I have observed very similar cases second hand, with (neurotypical and neuroatypical) children of my adult friends who are now going to school, with my younger brother several years ago when he was in primary school, and with a close friend of my family who has a son roughly the same age as me, who went through a very similar experience with schooling as I did. The circumstances that I have noticed are not limited to myself, the schools I attended, or even the general area I grew up in.

When mainstream schools are made to deal with children who are not neurotypical, they deal with them very poorly. Your typical mainstream school does not have the resources. The teachers there do not have the time, the training, and quite often not even the inclination to deal properly with such children. The school does not treat the child as an individual human being, with individual problems and needs to be met. The school simply treats A Case Of Autism (or other relevant diagnosis). In my case, once I received my diagnosis, the school’s guidance counselor printed out a list of coping strategies relevant to that particular disorder and handed them out to all of my teachers. Most of these instructions were in no way relevant to me (e.g. they described my supposed lack of ability to cope with everyday situations that I’d been quite happily immersed in and coping with as well as the next child for years). Neuroatypical children in mainstream schools are round pegs that are shoved clumsily into square holes. You know those Zero Tolerance rules that are so often decried on this blog? The average school’s approach to a special needs child is as ham-fisted and unthinking as that.

My second point is that when a child is neuroatypical, the child’s classmates are never made aware. This is due to rules to do with keeping that child’s privacy. This also has the unfortunate effect of the neurotypical children around the atypical child having absolutely no idea that that kid has special needs, and that they need to act accordingly. Children are often extremely cruel, especially to those they perceive as different, and will derive entertainment from provoking the neuroatypical child into breakdowns, tantrums and the like. The neurotypical kids won’t have any idea what autism (or other) is, or what it means for that child.

Unfortunately, this leads to the neuroatypical children in these cases having an incredibly unpleasant time at school. This leads to frustration, and the frustration leads to disobedience, violence, outbursts, tantrums, breakdowns.

Here is the other side of the coin.

In almost any school’s handbook or other similar document, you’ll find a list of Student Rights and Responsibilities. Under this list you will find two matching dot points that say something along the lines of “I will not be violent or disruptive” and “I expect to have a safe and happy learning environment”. In your average school, these dot points are Law. If you hurt another student, if you threaten others, if you disrupt the classroom, you will be punished for it. If you persist in these, you will be removed from the school so that others may have a safe and happy learning environment.

These rules, which are Law for everyone else, break down in the vicinity of a child with a labeled diagnosis who comes under the heading of “special needs”. These children are not punished the same as typical kids when they cause the classroom to become unsafe or unpleasant. For the typical children around them, most pertinently the ones who are the direct victims of a physical assault, this causes them to feel that justice is not done. A child who has transgressed is not punished. I can tell you, to a ten-year-old, this really shakes your view of Right and Wrong on its foundations. It begs questions such as “Why are we not treated the same?” “Why am I punished for fighting back when he is not?”, which ultimately leads into “Can I trust authority to right the wrongs that are done to me?” When I thought about this, as early as primary school, I realised that the answer to the last question is, No.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what circumstances lead to any child being disruptive or violent. What matters is the effect that this behaviour has on those around that child. Feeling threatened and unempowered and unsafe makes for a terrible learning environment, and a bad place for mental development. There is no feeling more unempowering than being effectively told “We will not punish the person who has hurt you. We will punish you for hurting them back. We will allow this situation to continue. You may not do anything about it. Accept it and stop bothering us.”

Thus, for everybody’s sake, the special needs children need to be sent to the special schools that are equipped to handle them, where the teachers have the understanding, the training and the inclination to give the children there the help they need to grow into functioning adults. These environments can protect those children from the cruelty of the others who see the difference but don’t understand it (or care that they hurt others), and in doing so, helps the mainstream schools that don’t have the resources to cope with special needs and all that it entails.

This is, in a nut shell (coconut shell), my reasoning for why a child that is liable to bite his classmates unprovoked needs to be removed from that situation. I am not suggesting that it needs to be forever – maybe he only needs to be delayed from entering mainstream school for an extra year to help build the appropriate social foundations.

my not quite 5 yo son gets himself dressed and undressed,clothes to the hamper,dirty dishes to the dishwasher.he’s very capable of taking a rice cracker and spreading cream cheese on it.

i think peple just don’t give their kids enough credit–they are really very capable–if we let them be.

i have friends who sit for hours every night helping their kids do homework and projects for school.maybe some of the kids need the help—but i’m assuming???that by 7th grade most kids should not need help with all the subjuects every night……

I see moms like this at my daughter’s school, where the lockers for the special-needs preschool kids are right across from the NT second-graders. While the preschooler’s parents and TAs diligently work with our kids to remind them of how to take off boots, jackets, put mittens in pockets themselves, there’s another group of moms doing all this stuff for their much-older children while they stand there like lumps of wax, arms out expectantly. It’s amazing to me that we have higher expectations of our three-year-old kids with special needs (mostly autism) than many mothers of second-graders do.

I’m hoping that one of these days, one of those mothers will glance over towards us and maybe wonder why we’re working so hard to teach our kids to be independent and decide that maybe it’s time for her children to do the same. To me, it looks like they’re working just as hard to handicap their NT kids as we are to teach our autistic kids to learn basic skills.

I am not a parent, so I cannot talk about this subject in the same way most of you can. However, I am a nanny and a baby-sitter, and I was a preschool teacher. The girl I nanny unbuckles herself when she’s in my car and gets out, and she opens my door if I’m not out yet. She cannot buckle herself – she’s tried. She puts her dirty clothes where they go and her trash in the trash can, and she occasionally gets herself a simple snack, but she does get a bit lazy about that one. I’m not sure if she has any shoes with laces, but she can put on all of her shoes by herself (except one pair that she insists on wearing even though they are too small). When I taught preschool, one-year-olds would throw their own trash away and put away their own coats and/or blankets. I often see this girl’s mom carrying all her own and her 8-year-old’s stuff to the car in the morning – all he brings to school is a lunchbox, and he is perfectly capable of carrying it himself. I also find his dirty clothes stuffed in between the sofa cushions. His only chore is to feed the dogs – I think he could do much more.

@ Audrey, way way back there…

I can tell you that my own mother, who was a single mother of 5 kids – though due to weird choices she made in earlier years she only raised the last two all the way through – She did EVERYTHING for those last two.

They all paid a high price. My brother became an alcoholic at a young age… he believed himself to be incapable of doing anything, and just gave up. He’s doing well now at 33, thanks to a strong-willed and patient wife. My sister, the youngest, bailed at 17 to gain some independence, and fortunately she is thriving, now 27. My mom felt she had no purpose in continuing to live after the last kid moved out. It took her 3 years to recover from a complete psychological break, and live independently again. She wasn’t even 60. Now at 67, she’s pretty much just waitin’ for the reaper. She never built a life… she lived through her kids, and in doing so, also made it really really hard for her kids to establish lives of their own. They had zero skills. Zero. Doing for them was all she ever did.

mollie – I feel your split-custody, differing ideas on “safety” and independence pain. My ex and I both live about a block (a tiny one) from my daughter’s school (in different complexes, but pretty much along the same route), and I can’t let her walk to and from school even when she’s with me, because of the problems it causes. My daughter hates this, and thinks it is completely unreasonable. (She’s 11.5, or “practically twelve” according to her.)

We’ve had similar problems just with basic responsibilities and independence levels. While I taught her to do as much for herself as possible and to help around the house from a young age, he seemed to think we should do everything for her (though he often gets confused when she doesn’t automatically know how to do something). He actually had a problem with the fact that I told her to go into the kitchen and get her own drink when she was *five*. At seven, she cooked me (completely on her own, with me sitting at the counter outside the kitchen just keeping her company) a *full* Mother’s Day breakfast. She didn’t want me to touch anything. That same year, she learned how to cook her first full meal for dinner (spaghetti bolognese, still her ‘specialty’). Yet… At 9, he was still insisting on pouring her cereal in the morning (or trying to tell me I should be doing it).
And since we’ve split up, I’ve discovered that it is difficult to help her be independent (as she so desperately wants… and has pretty much since she was born), when she is being completely stifled in the other households (she also spends some time at his parents…though they have been getting better about expecting her to do things herself). My house runs fairly smoothly, because there is a routine and everyone knows they are supposed to pick things up and do certain chores. She has no trouble flowing right along with that. The problem is that she doesn’t have that same routine/system in place elsewhere, and even when she wants to do things herself, she’s overwhelmed. I have to try to give her advice on how to still be responsible and do things that need to be done, even when it is made harder by things being *way* more chaotic and having the rules actually stacked against her being able to accomplish anything independently. And I have to do it without being able to be there, see the situation and give specific guidance, while trying to balance things against what her father will and won’t allow.

And yes, I have run into other family members (heh… not from my side of the family) and other parents trying to be “helpful” when I am trying to teach her to do more for herself. Why does it have to be so much of a fight, these days, just to teach kids how to be competent, capable individuals?

So then how do you convince your ex to stop stealing these opportunities from your daughter? 😉

Uly, to clarify, the thing I want my kid to do better is to tie her OWN shoes and not rely on others to tie them. I also want her to tie them tightly enough that they don’t come untied again in a matter of minutes. If she ties them half-assed so they come untied again, she should have to re-tie them herself as often as necessary. If she finds herself having to drop everything and tie her shoes every 5 minutes, maybe she’ll be motivated to tie them tighter the first time. Does that make sense?

@BeQui yes bullies should be kicked out of school/sent to alternative school. The other students deserve to have an education not abuse.

Most Autistic kids can be taught social behaviors. Bullies are sociopaths sooner locked up away from the rest of us the better. (I’m not taking about name calling and childhood scuffles but real bullies who terrorize other children).

SKL – well, it makes a heck of a lot more sense than what I thought you said!

Donna – I refer you to Carrie’s comment above, and also point out that what you’re describing is not what SKL says she’s doing. Unless you are her kid’s teacher, of course.

This is crazy. My son has been dressing himself for inside and outside for two years (he’s almost four). Yesterday he learned how to get the juice out of the fridge and pour a glass for himself… this morning he tried it out before we were out of bed and spilt juice all over the kitchen, so he cleaned it up, by himself! Did a pretty good job too. He loves being independent and his little sister is following very much in his footsteps: she tries to dress herself, she CAN get her shoes on, though not done up and she’ll get her own bowl for food and both of them clear their dishes from the table (she’s 20 months). I love having independent kids and they just shine when I let them do things for themselves. It baffles me why you wouldn’t.

@Jennifer (who replied at 19:48, Feb. 26): Have you checked online about Dyspraxia? I wasn’t diagnosed with it until about third grade (age 8 or 9) and it’s not well known, but it’s a coordination disorder that essentially means I, as a college student, have to stop walking, talking, pause my music, and look down in order to do up a button. It also took me until age 10 or 11 to balance on a bike, my best handwriting is still comparable to chicken-scratch… but it mainly just meant I had to work a bit harder/longer. http://www.dyspraxiausa.org/ is the website.

One of my kids has some reading and writing delays, and also tends to be rather forgetful. I have struggled, and struggled trying to get the school to focus on the academics, and not treat his disorganization and forgetfulness as a syndrome they have to fix. Sure, help him organize his thoughts for a written assignment. Teach him how to take notes and make to-do lists. But for the love of all that is holy DON’T police whether he puts his stuff away, brings his gym shoes, or all that crap. He is LAZY. He will do as little as he can get away with. If he forgets or loses something, let him deal with the consequences. I sent this kid to resident camp for a week last summer at age 9, and he managed to not lose a single thing (in fact, he came home with someone else’s socks!). I think he can handle it.

In my lazy, defeatist opinion, this is a great argument for daycare. Kids are so much more willing to try harder and be the grownup when their parents aren’t around. I know my youngest asks me to do things for her she would never ask a care provider to do.

@ Uly –

As far as Carrie’ statement, I think you are comparing apples and oranges. This is not daycare. This is a regulated school day controlled by the Board of Education and functioning on the same schedule as K-12.

As a result, the class day has strict, government regulated start and stop times, exactly like those in K-12. Since the teacher can’t have parents wandering around the classroom looking at art work and still start class on time, they discourage parents from coming in. Think of how distracting it would be for a 2nd grade teacher to start class with all the parents walking around the classroom every morning looking at work and trying to discuss things with the teacher. It wouldn’t happen and my teachers have no less regulation on them. There is absolutely no discouragement and parents are more than welcome to come into the classroom, walk around and talk to the teacher in the morning before the children reach pre-k (age 4). The school simply prefers that the parents do the talking and art work praising after class in pre-k so the teacher can start on time.

As far as SKL, I never said she was doing any of those things. She said that she liked to walk in to see what the kids were doing for the day. I simply stated that the class day at my child’s school hasn’t started at the time the kids get dropped off so the parents AT MY CHILD’S SCHOOL are not looking to see what the kids are doing for the day.

I was speaking about specific situations at my child’s specific school in which parents are coming into the classroom and distrupting the school day against the wishes of the school not making a general statement that ALL parents who walk their children into the classroom are being helicopter parents.

I thought of this yesterday when something typical happened at work. I am a nanny for a 4-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy. The boy had a snack of apples with honey. He then asked me to get him a wet towel to wipe his sticky hands. We were all sitting down – he was watching tv, and I was reading a book. I said no, he could get up and wash his hands himself. In my experience teaching preschool, this is what teachers would expect a 2-year-old to do. He asked me 3-4 times, getting more and more upset, before he finally did it himself. As he got up, he said something like, “I never get to do anything I want,” to which I responded, “Oh yeah, since you got home from school, you’ve gotten to play with legos, use the computer, and watch tv, and not once have I told you to stop doing any of those things.” (He did clean up toys for about 2 minutes, but that was because he agreed to help his sister.) I wonder what all his mom does for him when she’s home.

@ mollie and KLY — Interesting, I sometimes wonder if the rise in helicopter parenting is related to the rise in divorce rates. I think a big part of the appeal of helicoptering is that it makes parenting highly visible. And being observable to others, means those others can corroborate that the person is a good parent, which may be particularly attractive to those for whom custody is an issue (even if it’s settled, it is, in principle, an issue).

Mollie, sounds like you defused the situation with their dad brilliantly though. And cheers to both of you for not buckling (even if at times it can only be inwardly).

@BMS I understand what you are saying and agree if they are only targeting your child for organizational help. If it is the whole class that is a different matter. I often get the “We know they are showing dyslexic/dysgraphic tendencies but they are so smart they are cruising by right now kids” in my class.

That was me back in elementary school. The idea is that I teach them coping strategies NOW before they hit the wall (I hit mine in University and it hurt).

We work on organizing our stuff as well as we are learning the curriculum. That way they have what they need, when they need it. I’m not wasting time because Johnny doesn’t have his notebook ready.

“Unless you know for absolutely sure that that “overly mothered” child is not autistic, than you need to think twice about certain kinds of judgements.”

I agree with this comment. See also: dyspraxia, which I have. Organising myself was impossible at school. My mum still didn’t over-mother me though, I just borrowed from other people all the time, used the spare PE kit and did schoolwork on loose sheets of paper when I forgot my exercise book for the millionth time. She also attached my mittens to my coat with string, which I thought was very clever! 🙂

I have to say, Sera, this is pretty normal when no neuroatypical children are involved.

Aye, it is. I must make the pertinent point that there is a big difference between conventional bullying, and the violent acting-out behaviour of a child with some sort of neurological impairment.

Bullies are… well, they’re fairly predictable, and consequence driven. There are ways and means to avoid them, or do something about them, or at the very least, you know that a bully is a bully and you know what to expect. The bullies also know that they will be punished if they fail to keep their behaviour from authority figures, so there are many situations where they can’t do anything.

A special needs child at my brother’s primary school stabbed her classmate through the hand with a pencil. Right there in the classroom, in full view of the teacher and the rest of the class, with her aide sitting a few feet away. Her classmate had done nothing to provoke her – she had just gotten frustrated with whatever it was she was doing and lashed out, attacking the nearest child. The child described in this thread also (apparently) lashes out violently if he loses his gloves.

This lashing-out behaviour is, from the point of view of the victim, entirely random. These impaired kids aren’t reacting to anything the victims are doing, nor are they sociopaths with a predictable habit of hurting others for enjoyment. Therefore, the typical kids can’t really react to, plan around, or avoid this behaviour from the impaired child, other than by staying as far away from him as possible at all times.

The lashing-out behaviour is also not as controlled as conventional bullying. Your neurotypical bully generally knows when to stop, when to not leave evidence, and when they can overstep the line so that people will really pay attention. A violent neuroatypical child does not have these limits. They don’t think about the consequences of gouging at a classmate’s eyes. They don’t think about attacking another child with a toy and with their teeth until they bleed.

I can just see me talking to said hypothetical women in my condescending French accent and why without independence the child will never become a adult