2025/2/9

Comments on children with special needs participating in ST/SA

Who has special needs?

In thinking about children with special needs in relation to ST/SA, it is helpful to know where Vivian Paley began her thinking. Throughout her career, Vivian REFUSED to label any child in any way ever. For her, every child has special needs, and their needs differed in every possible way. That's what makes each of us unique, special, a treasure, and simply the best! Vivian had a way of seeing and believing in each of us as deeply, and it was a gift to be seen in her eyes. She offers us the chance to practice this skill and extend it to every child we have the honor to invite a story from, and every child who will act in a story. She started there and so can we.

Children with special needs and methods of working with them:

The next detail is that the special needs we each have can be visible and there are plenty of invisible ones. Whatever the need is, we want to welcome it, accept it, treasure it and not feel that it is a burden or a reason to separate us from others. We might think and feel differently than what others expect but that makes us special.

Often we as teachers are looking for a "method" for working with children with autism, or a child who is in a wheel chair, or who has cerebral palsy, or a child who carries deep emotional fears at being separated from their mother or a favorite toy, or a child with a speech challenge: a stutter or problems forming words. Vivian would say there are no special methods for any range of difficulties. There is only listening, asking the child questions to find out what might help them, and seeking to help the child feel seen, heard, supported and welcomed as fully as any other child in the activities. The adaptations we make to help achieve that goal for any child are limited only by our empathy and willingness to help others.

Another important strategy for working with all children, and one that we may not be understanding how to help, is to ask other children to help you see what might help a child. Children have incredible ways of understanding one another that we might miss. So as the teacher listening to a child dictate a story who is having trouble with certain words that we are not understanding, we might say to a child nearby, “Will you help listen to what Sarah is saying and see if you understand the words so I can write them down?” Children will gladly help each other and you as teacher. When a child says, “Oh, Sarah means “mouse,” not “mommy.” You can then say to Sarah, “Is that right? Did you mean “mouse?” It is important that we always check back with the author to confirm a word and its meaning.

For Vivian, adaptations to children's needs were simple: patience while listening, asking other children what they think might help a child who was struggling while showing deep respect and kindness toward the one in need. She would do anything to anticipate and accommodate a child through sheer generosity and kindness. She would say her methods for all children began there: generosity, kindness and respect and listening - all qualities that the teachers in our seminar already "took away" from the seminar on Jan. 25th. The teachers already have what they need to move forward with all children.