Finding your Power: Self-advocacy Language

Power to Choose!

Self-Advocacy

How to equip my children with words and communication skills to obtain what they need! The most important gift we can give our children is the freedom to choose, independence to exercise that choice, and the ability to live that freedom.

Skill: Learning the words and skills to self-advocate.

Review: What is language?

Language refers to the words we use and how we use them to share ideas and get what we want.

Self-advocacy means:

• When you speak up for yourself.

• When you decide what YOU want to do now or in the future.

• Understanding your strengths and weaknesses.

• Developing personal goals.

• Being assertive (meaning standing up for yourself).

• Making decisions.

• Communicating your needs and making decisions about the supports necessary to meet those needs (Martin Huber-Marshall, & Maxon, 1993; Stodden, 2000).

Strategy: Identify, define, and instruct your child to know their needs and know how to get what they need.

• Create a learning profile for your child. A learning profile details your child’s strengths, weaknesses, and needs (social, emotional, behavioral, and academic). Identifies the skill area and gaps tied to weaknesses. It is important to identify where the learning barriers are so that address proactively. Helping your child alternative identify means and strategies to achieve a task or solve a problem.

Build:

• Create a checklist of skill focus for your child. See categories below each skill section is prioritized based on importance for building independence and survival skills.

• Identify one or two areas and focus until the skill is mastered.

Skills should evolve with age and the demands of the environment. In which of these areas does your child need assistance to develop the skill to the demands of their age and environment. These are all areas that everyone has to develop and evolve throughout a lifetime. If your child has a learning difference the development of the skills in the impacted areas may require more focus and intentional instruction. Developing proactive strategies and alternative strategies where your child can obtain the support and assistance they need proactively. There are several areas that require continuous development:

• communication

• attention/focus

• perspective

• organized thinking: prioritizing, planning, and goal-driven objectives

Physical and healthy living needs: includes self-care and managing needs specific to me. Sensory, allergies, and other conditions:

• my body: exercise, healthy eating, and proper hygiene

• brain: focus, regulation, anxiety, and stress

• heart: emotional regulation and mood management

• creating healthy goals and habits

• identifying and creating supportive living and learning environments

Support: who can support me on my journey and understand my needs?

• family

• friends

• teachers

• coaches

• therapists

• mentors

• inspirational roles models

• initiating and building the relationships with helpers

Learning and training: these skill areas require intentional instructional coaching and/or intervention depending on the learning difference.

• seeking assistance and

  • tools and strategies that build skills. Finding alternative pathways and bridge skill gaps

  • reading about and researching resources/finding support and resources

  • social-emotional learning and competency:

    • social language: what words to use when

    • emotional awareness and regulation- words for emotions and the ability to manage emotions

    • perspective-taking (Theory of Mind):

      • Theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to attribute mental states to ourselves and others, serving as one of the foundational elements for social interaction.

      • Having a theory of mind is important as it provides the ability to predict and interpret the behavior of others.

    • organized thinking: goal-driven behavior

    • critical thinking: observe, analyze, interpret, reflect, evaluate, infer, explain, problem-solve, and decision making

    • decision making: the act or process of making choices.

  • employment

  • life skills- money management, cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, computer skills, making appointments, and driving etc.

  • safety -self-defense and protection

Story:

As a Cuban refugee, my father’s parenting and education revolved around survival and life skills first. Understandably, my father’s worst fear was that I would find myself alone and unable to help myself. Having to flee his country with nothing but the shirt on his back and his knowledge. My father’s favorite words were “no one can ever take away your knowledge”. My father devoted his life to preparing me for full independence and self-sufficiency. Having me at an older age he feared that he would not always be around to help me so he rushed to share all he felt I needed to know to be able to take care of myself.

As a result, I have raised my children with the same philosophy. I did not have the same urgency believing that I have more time but do we? My father passed away when I was 23 years old. To my amazement, he shared all the knowledge and skills that I needed to be completely self-sufficient at 23. Including caring for him during his terminal sickness and supporting my mother after his death.

There is not a day in my life that I am not grateful for the gift of true freedom that my father gave me. He equipped me with the skills to have choices and live reaping the reward of great freedom. Choices give us freedom. My father was a great proponent of education and encouraged me to never stop learning. He always said that knowledge was the one thing that cannot be taken from you. Having experienced himself the communist regime of Cuba taking from everything he ever owned or valued. Thankfully, the regime did not take his family.

I have never stopped learning although I was fortunate enough to have a university education, most of my current professional knowledge was self-taught and driven by the deep desire to equip my children with the same freedom that I have enjoyed and thrived with. Both of my children have learning differences that have required intentional, individualized and strategic instruction to bridge the skill gaps. We also found different pathways to the same destination.

The only academic skills listed here are reading and research. Sometimes we can get lost in the rabbit hole of academics. When you look at this list you see that there are just so many skills that are not acquired in school. We must provide all children with the non-academic skills that are critical to their survival and thriving. Social-emotional learning encompasses a much larger portion of the skills required for thriving. Acquisition of knowledge is very important but more importantly, is the ability to apply and knowledge. With the daily evolving technology there are countless tools that make knowledge accessible. Education is not limited to the academic curriculum and academic institutions. Examine the scope of your child’s instruction and confirm that it is diversified and broad encompassing social competency. As well as survival skills which are techniques that a person may use in order to sustain life in any type of natural environment or built environment. 

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

Maya Angelou

The cognitive skills prized by the American educational establishment and

measured by achievement tests are only part of what is required for success in life.

Character skills are equally important determinants of wages,

education, health, and many other significant aspects of flourishing lives.

James Heckman