Parents As First Teachers & Special Agency

Education starts in the home.

For ordinary parents, the education is ordinary, that is, it’s about learning - our environment, our cultures, our behaviours, our values – drawing, reading, counting, singing, dancing, writing, cooking, cleaning, going to the park, walking, riding a bike, kicking a ball, swimming, caring, communicating – and much more.

For special parents, it’s both ordinary - that is, all of the above - and special – all the additional and specialised ways of caring for, advocating for, coordinating and applying medical and therapeutic interventions for our child. In addition, all the ordinary tasks need to be done in altered and modified ways.

Ordinary parents already have all their skills because they are living skills. If they do these activities, their children will at a minimum imitate them (unless they are rebelling of course). They can also hire specialised tutors or coaches to add to these skills. The coaches don’t need specialised or more expensive skills.

Special parents, need to be learn all of the special skills, necessary for their special child’s survival, both the ordinary skills adjustments and modifications, as well as the medical-therapeutic ones. Specialist tutors or coaches need additional special training.

The responsibility is greater. The stakes are higher. The pressure to not fail is at once, biological and sociological.

As special parents, we hit walls that impact our abilities, skills and our mental health resilience. The self-talk is intense and usually occurs during vulnerable times, such as the middle of the night. Sleepless and exhausted, we cope with incessant reminders of how and why we got to be special. At the same time, we look for silver bullets, magic formulas . . . until we notice, that the formula is inside us. We model the thoughts, ideas, and actions that our children notice and imitate. Their choice to rebel is limited, unless it’s part of their condition. They too, are striving to survive. They look to us, their first teachers, for how to learn, how to do, how to be. Only we can respond to that call. That realisation. That’s when our personal agency kicks in.

Definition of agency: the ability to access self-efficacy and self-determination to make decisions and to put those decisions into action, in order to affect a particular outcome or outcomes for ourselves or for our children or both.