Talking to your children about their differences

Hello Wheelock families, welcome back to to start of another great school year!  I feel very inspired to start my 2019-2020 school blog with such an important topic.  So often, I hear from parents about kids coming home and feeling down on themselves because of a difference or challenge they face.  Maybe these kids receive extra help with their speech, reading, math or social/emotional weaknesses and they are starting to feel self conscious about it.  Although kids may not see it yet, there are so many students in each classroom that receive extra support for a variety of reasons.  Regardless, I believe this is a great teachable moment.  There are a lot of great resources about this topic and here are some of the key points I want to share.

1. Start by talking about how everyone has strengths and weaknesses
- there is no one person who is good at everything
- talk to your child about what you are good at and what is not easy for you
- help to point out specific examples for yourself and your child

2. Empower and encourage
- help them build a positive attitude about their difference(s)
- acknowledging their areas of difficulty will help fuel their self advocacy
- helping them to understand what strategies work for their areas of difficulty
For example:
"We know that you have trouble focusing and listening, so remember to ask the teacher to sit in the front or ask for a quick brain break"
- sometimes practicing (role playing) what to say if other kids ask them questions about their differences can help them feel prepared
For example: "Hey why do you wear glasses now?", "I have these new glasses because I used to see double when I looked at the board, boy what a relief!"

3. Partnering with schools/teachers to communicate and collaborate about supporting your child will be key
- Be sure to reach out to your child's teacher and/or specialist to keep the communication open

4. Other tips for talking to your kids about this topic:
- "Your challenges do not define you"
- "I know it can be uncomfortable to talk about this, I am here to listen"
- It's important to keep this conversation going, especially as kids get older and interpret things different at different developmental points
- Praise progress and effort (not just end results)
- Provide honest and specific compliments over frequent general praise (i.e. I like how hard you tried to figure out that math problem vs. good job)
- watching videos of other kids or researching famous people who also have learning differences or other disabilities can better put things in perspective for kids

It's very common for kids with any type of learning or social/emotional difficulty to display some self esteem concerns.  Helping to empower our kids to acknowledge their area of difficulties will help to eventually make them feel more liberated.  They will soon learn about friends and classmates that also have differences/weaknesses. 

I hope this information has been helpful, like I said there are so many great resources on this topic but here are a few I thought were particularly good:

https://www.imdetermined.org/

https://childmind.org/article/how-to-help-kids-talk-about-learning-disabilities/

https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/understanding-childs-challenges/talking-with-your-child/how-to-talk-to-your-child-about-learning-and-attention-issues