Julana at Life in the Slow Lane writes Therapy notes 33: teaching, trusting. Julana has a son with Down’s syndrome and poignantly blogs vignettes from their lives.
When a child begins a voyage through the seas of habilitative therapy, he simultaneously embarks on his teaching career. Firstly, he teaches his therapists how he learns. Secondly, he ends up being regularly observed by college students in the fields of psychology, special education, and physical, occupational, or speech therapy.
What struck me about this statement is the view of student as teacher. Really, this dynamic can and ought be applied to any relationship, whether teacher/student, doctor/patient, parent/child, boss/employee, friend/friend, or spouse/spouse, etc.
I will never forget the time when, many years ago, I was conversing with a man about my work. I was fairly new in the community and he had befriended me and helped me to make contacts. At one point he questioned me about something, and I answered, and then he said something like, “OK, I see what you’re saying. See, I’m learning how to talk with you; I’m learning your language.” Well, that was a revelation to me. No one had ever said anything like that to me before.
Many years later, when I had become a parent and was trying to learn how to parent my extremely intense oldest son, I couldn’t find a book that didn’t seem to be missing what I really needed to know. Especially since I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Then I found Mary Sheedy Kurcinka’s Raising Your Spirited Child, and there was my answer. This book is about getting to know your child and his/her particular characteristics, understand them, and then work with them to help him/her learn how to live. This book is not a “Christian” book, yet neither does it equate kids’ tendencies with excuses to allow misbehavior. It simply encourages a compassionate, respectful, and honorable view toward children (and toward ourselves, which I also appreciated!).
Our children will learn compassion and respect by being treated with compassion and respect. Our friends and other loved ones will be helped to maintain, or increase, their compassion and respect for others by being respected and treated compassionately by us.
Julana also speaks of the reassurance fostered by therapists’ and helpers’ kind, compassionate treatment of her son, which enables her to trust that there will be people to help him when she is no longer able to do so. I believe it is this sort of treatment that enables any of us to trust others, even God perhaps, and be reassured that we will be taken care of when we need it.
