Independence - What Does
This Mean?
With any child, you would like them to be independent – but what does that really mean? We are all interdependent, on friends, on family on boyfriends and girlfriends. We depend on each other for encouragement, support, feedback, advice, a shoulder to cry on or a friend to listen to us. So how does this play out for a child with special needs?
Isolation – this is where most people find themselves when they are less verbal, less able to navigate the social waters to create lasting and meaningful relationships.
How does this look for my son? Living in a shared living community independence comes in many ways, however it is all in a safe environment. My biggest concern has always been safety. My son has no radar to tell him if someone is being kind or devious; if someone wants to be his friend or steal from him or even worse, to hurt him. These very outcomes have happened to him when he was in middle school. When he was in high school he was scared because someone kept calling him on his phone, say nothing and hang up. It turns out that it was someone on his wrestling team – on the same bus he was on – who was taunting him.
So is independence a good thing? I see it as a feeling – a feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of being able to do something that you were not able to do before, a feeling that I got this, I know this, this makes sense. This feeling of independence can be found in a completely controlled environment because it is not the act itself that is important – it is the feeling that the person gets when doing it.
My son works in a bakery and where there is the head baker, the other students, the co-workers, the student-apprentices. All have varying levels of experience and all work interdependently to create the final product and at the same time all work independently on each of their tasks. The beauty of this is that each person feels accomplished, each person feels like they did it on their own, each person owns the result of what they work on.
True independence comes when we work/play in a interdependent environment, supporting each other, recognizing each others abilities and strengths, edifying each other as we weave our abilities together.