What I Learned from Special Education

Leslie Layman
Jul 24, 2017 · 4 min read

I spent the first 10 years of my career (and much of my “free” time afterwards) as a direct support professional to children with developmental disabilities. I’ve been in a variety of settings: fully enclosed special education schools, public school inclusion consulting, in home therapy and respite, private therapy, and community based skill training to name a few. The benefit of seeing the same types of kids in so many settings, is that you get a real sense of what’s important. What matters day to day and setting to setting, what is environmental, and what to let go.

Here are my Top 5 Most Important Take Aways from my experiences:

  1. Watch, Look, Listen, Observe

Children with all types of disabilities and specifically those with developmental delays have difficulty with communication and social skills. Whoever you are to the child: teacher, parent, friend, therapist, etc. you are also their cultural interpreter. Think of your self as a cultural anthropologist, learning from the child’s natural ways of communicating (we’ll get to this in a minute) and bringing back your research to the typically developing and communicating world. Think of Oliver Sack’s description of Temple Grandin, An Anthropologist on Mars and reverse it.

2. Everyone is Always Communicating Always

Many if not most of the children I have worked with had limited use of or no verbal communication. I have NEVER met a child who did not communicate. I’ll say it again for those of you in the back, I HAVE NEVER MET A CHILD WHO DID NOT COMMUNICATE.

It may not be words, but children make noise, pace, bite, smile, tantrum, and it is all telling you something if you know what to look for. How do I know what children are communicating? I don’t always. But back to my first point, when a child is trying to communicate, I get to their level and really, really observe. What I’m looking for are patterns and consistencies that let me know what the child feels, wants, or needs.

3. If a Child Communicates to You-Communicate Back!!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by a well-meaning and caring professional (Speech Language, Behaviorist, Special Education Teacher) NOT to communicate with a child that was trying to tell me something. “Don’t let him sign to you when we’re teaching him to communicate with the IPad.”

This does not mean you have to attend to every annoying thing the child does. This does not mean that you cannot hold out for form of communication you are trying to teach. It does mean that if the child makes a communication bid you must respond to it. Stanley Greenspan calls this “closing circles.”

Complete ignoring is disheartening to the child and is not how anyone, let alone someone with difficulties with communication and social skills, learns the value of language and relationships.

4. What Goes Up Must Come Down (and up and down, and up and down again)

Lots of intervention plans and IEPs look like this: Kayla will ___ with __ level of assistance __ out of __ opportunities, until mastered as measured by __.

I’ve heard from many parents that when they first heard developmental delay, they thought that their child would develop as a typical child, just more slowly. It’s true of all children, but especially for children with disabilities, development can be all over the place.

I’ve also seen more often than not when the child is about to gain a new skill that is difficult for them, something that they had “mastered” suddenly disappears. For example, a child who hasn’t wet the bed in months will begin to do so right before they learn a new social skill.

For this reason, and to harp on point one, if the child has suddenly “lost” an ability that they previously had, it’s a good time to start really observing and taking some good notes, because you are likely to see something new.

5. There are No Dumb Accommodations

By this I don’t mean that anything that is put in place to help will work. I have seen (and created) a lot of silly classroom rearrangements, failed sensory interventions, useless behavior incentive programs and the like.

What I mean is the same thing your teachers meant when they said, “The only dumb question is the one you didn’t ask.” Your teachers said this because if you were confused about something, it was likely at least one other classmate was too, and was too afraid to ask. The same thing holds true for children with disabilities: if a modification needs to be made for that child, it is very likely that modification will help another child as well. Just like a wheelchair ramp makes it easier for someone who walks to push a grocery cart. This can be thought of as Universal Design for Learning.

I can think of so many more, but these are the ones that help me the most everyday no matter who I’m working with or what I’m doing. Let me know what you’ve learned from your experiences.

Leslie Layman

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