“I’m no good for this… I feel sorry for them, poor things… I don’t think I can get close, I freeze up…”
If you work with people with disabilities, you might have felt this way the first time, with the first contact. You might have frozen up or not known how to approach those kids who apparently won’t understand you.
Well, don’t be afraid. Everyone, at the beginning of our intervention, feels unease when we find ourselves in a classroom or consulting room with a child or young person with a disability, and we are intimidated by their physical or morphological features. The media always shows us perfection, and we are not prepared for uniqueness or exception.
Ideally, we would always work with children and young people with Down Syndrome, who are physically tender and expressive, sociable or grumpy, and this combination is attractive and motivating for the therapist or educator, and encourages working with more special children. In our daily lives, we see children and young people with Down Syndrome parading on catwalks, in supermarkets, even at university, and we interact with them; they are very kind, they perform their work with effort and dedication… And if you work in a special school or education center, they are little ones who cover you with kisses… They can’t transmit more happiness!
But what if your first approach to children with a deficiency is not so pleasant, but rather with an unknown, rare, and visually uncomfortable syndrome? We’re talking about Soto Syndrome, Rett Syndrome, severe or profound cerebral palsy… what should we do?
Regardless of the syndrome, you must be clear that you are facing a person who needs you as a professional. They don’t need your pity but your respect, and this includes treating them as an equal. Always look them in the eyes; that will give them confidence and encouragement. Many times we think they don’t see, hear, or speak, but each syndrome is magnificent despite its limitations.
With the passing of sessions and the achievement of programmed goals, you will realize that the child who initially didn’t respond in any way, didn’t move their eyes, limbs, or make a sound, now tries to communicate with the world around them. Not all people are very sociable at first, but little by little you open up and get closer to others. The same happens in therapy. You will see over the months, and even years, how a thumbs-up is the key to a conversation or how moving a foot or touching the floor is essential to understand a request. You don’t realize until that moment how much you have gotten closer to them to achieve these goals, that you have discovered a new world, their reality, and then the objectives follow more quickly: you work as a team.
Our task is not to reject the first encounter; our mission is to seek out and approach, from our experience, that child or young person who needs to achieve clear objectives according to their mental and chronological age. Your activities must be programmed in a personalized way: you must first know their capacities, don’t let appearances get in the way and offer an activity for two-year-olds to a 12-year-old adolescent simply because they don’t speak or show physical activity.
Those of us who work with people with disabilities never know who will enter our classroom. Our objective is integration; we are given a classroom varied in size and syndromes, and we must choose generality in the face of disability to begin charting the path forward, what to teach, or how to direct and foster a habit.
Knowing the syndrome, its mental, sensory, and physical development helps us prepare. And if you have doubts, turn to experts, professional colleagues who have already gone through this… and you can even browse the internet a bit to see what family associations tell us about their lives.