Creative Play and Moms with Special Needs Kids: How to Understand Your Child Even Better

Moms with special needs kids will recognize themselves in my words here today.

I can’t even tell you how often this happens to me:  the car behind me honks to startle me awake from solving all the world’s problems or writing my shopping list or deciphering last night’s dream. Sometimes I am thinking about how to help my children lead their best lives. Oftentimes I am specifically thinking about Samuel's education. The next round of assessments, the IEP or whatever barrier I think may be right around the corner.

We are bombarded with advice, good intentions, and “professional-know-how” but when it comes down to it, we teach our children from our gut more than our intellect and we hope and pray much of the time that somehow something is getting through.

Sometimes those prayers turn into an obsession.

Samuel has high functioning autism and is in a sixth grade general education classroom which sometimes goes well and sometimes, like anything else in life, falls short. I made it a point to introduce myself to the teachers earlier in the year, neither of whom had experience to teaching children with autism.

I reminded them I never expect anyone to be an expert in my child along with a request for us to work together in helping him become successful.

This week Samuel’s language arts teacher sent me an email over the weekend so I could start prepping Samuel and then working with him throughout the week. Their writing assignment was to write a story about waking up one day as a CAT rather than a PERSON.

At first Samuel didn’t want to do this until we started talking about characters and how different characters impact the “what happens” in the story.

This seemed to become a theme for me this week: it started with how to best help my son with autism in school more and turned into a different way to approach the world.

Last night on the way home from an event at the Art and Spirituality Center we created from a whole new-to-me version of Hansel and Gretl. This lead to me wondering how Emily Dickinson might write a poem about a particular intersection here in Bakersfield.

I sat in my car, looking at a street light. I thought, “How would Emily Dickinson see this seedy neighborhood with this high powered street lamp?”

I was having so much fun I almost didn’t see the traffic light turn green.

Are you ready to experience the darkness on a Bakersfield street corner with Emily Dickinson and me?

Street Light, Corner of 21^st and Union

Electric orb

Sharing luminousness with the

Members of the pearly ancient profession

And the shaking, tittering loose toothed

Hungry for the next, next, next….

As well as the cars who have lost

Their way and landed

Underneath you

Without question

Your work is done

# # #

Think about one of your favorite characters: fictional, historical, literary, and consider what might happen how they might experience your life through you. 

To go deeper and more personal with your family, what might it be like to experience your life as your child?

Have you ever considered that in a creative, playful way?

Perhaps writing as your child will help you understand him or her better. 

Just beware of when the light turns green. The car behind you might honk to startle you awake from your creative parenting play.

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot    

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

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