A couple of weeks ago I shared a story about Ayelen and the importance of self-advocacy. (Read it with a click, here) I was literally praising her strength and confidence when it comes to defending her right to be informed about any changes that affect her schedule or her routine, supported by the fact that her learning process involves consistency and daily visual reminders.
Today, as I write the second part of how to raise a self-advocate, I am going to illustrate a reality that many times we choose to ignore: not everything is about glory in the process of helping our children learn how to use their voices. Like any other human being, they make mistakes, and as we teach them to defend their rights, we must teach them to fulfill their responsibilities.
So the story begins with an email from the teacher telling me that Yaya decided to skip art class because she doesn’t like it and let everyone know that now she will do P.E. instead. The teacher, who is, by the way, the most amazing in the world, emails me to ask for my input as they decide what step to follow responding to Yaya’s behavior.
Do you see? Here I could say that is Yaya’s right to make this decision but it is not. There is a schedule in place that she accepted at the beginning of the school year. She was involved in every decision, and now, she cannot just choose to change her mind whenever she feels like it. As she has the right to be an active participant in every decision made about her in her role as an advocate, she has the responsibility to follow directions like the rest of the class.
That said, I asked the teacher for a couple of days to work with Ayelen on going back on track as she understands that rights come along with responsibilities.
Her voice is her superpower, but like any other superpower, if used without boundaries and responsibilities, it can become a burden in her life because not everyone in the future is going to be willing to do as she says. As it happens to all of us, she will need to follow up with rules and schedules, even if she doesn’t always enjoy them as much as she would like to.
There is a difference between rights and privileges. People with disabilities have the right to be included in every decision made about their lives in general, which includes, health, education, career, etc. They have the right to have accommodations and modifications when needed, which means, we will determine along with the person, which things need to be adapted or modified when we as a team, determine that as a result of their disability, the environment or a specific thing needs to be made more accessible to maximize their abilities.
However, if out of privilege we choose to do the easier thing to avoid fighting with them or to avoid having to face the tough reality that it is not always easy to redirect, then we are going to be hurting them. Life doesn’t work like that and they need to grow to understand clearly that rights come along with responsibilities.
We reviewed her visual schedule this morning again. I explained to her she cannot change her schedule out of the blue because as people need to respect her, she needs to respect other people and understand that the challenge is where we grow and we learn to self-regulate. She wasn’t the happiest person in the world this morning when she left for school. We will see how she applies this reflection in real life and as usual, there will be consequences. Good ones to strengthen the right choices, difficult ones to address the not ideal choices that are not necessarily bad but need to be corrected in order to equip her with the social and life skills abilities that she needs to succeed in middle school, but most importantly, in life.
