Rewards of a Career Helping those with Special needs
Rewards of a career helping those with special needs:
The rewards you get when working with special needs children does not come in the form of money. It often does not come from parents of special needs children. The reward is seeing the progress they make. Even though they may be tiny steps, yet to others they are giant leaps for many of our special needs children, and their families. This is the personal rewarding part of the career when working special needs individuals.
It is so amazing how our special needs individuals are more capable then many give them credit. I had a little autistic boy in my class; his mother was away, she was in the Navy and the war had just started. His father came to the classroom and told us that he needed help in everything and his son was not able to do anything on his own. His father seemed to be at his wits end, but very concerned with his son. The boy was six and this was his 2nd year in school.
I have always known that our special needs children and adults have something special to offer the world, but this is what validated my personal feelings, and proved my belief. This experience happened to me in my first year of working with special needs children.
For some reason he attached himself to me, he could not speak. So I became his one-on-one. I did everything with him, changed his diapers, he had an odd digestive system and could not tell when or if he needed to go to the bathroom, but everyone around him knew when he did!
If you know anything about autism, most will not look at you, nor are they affectionate. We (the aids and the teacher) picked up our children in front of the school to take them to class. The little boy, oh his name is Kasey. Kasey would kiss me and hug me as soon as he saw me he would also get very excited. During attendance he would participate by putting his name on the board, he was a blond-haired boy so he knew which picture represented him.
One of the things my school always did for fun was to have crazy sock day. I would always wore Tigger socks on that day. I noticed all the kids in our special education class would look at my socks first thing every morning. Therefore, I started wearing Tigger on something with Tigger on my clothing every day. All the kids in our class would look for Tigger on me and get so excited when they found the Tigger. Kasey found my Tigger change purse which was attached to my purse amusing and held onto it on our way to class every day.
I am now disabled and no longer in the classroom, I miss it very much, and I still wear a Tigger somewhere every day. A habit I have yet to break, nor am I interested in breaking it.
Anyway, Kasey was starting to observe things, we got him to do things like swing the jump rope for others to play jump rope, he went on the swing set on his own, climbed and went down the slide on his own. He learned how to feed himself at lunch, and using pictures he learned how to ask for things he needed, and he understood what we ask for, he learned how to use the pictures to ask for things he wanted to do. Finally, he learned how to brush his teeth. All this sounds like such simple everyday things, but when his father came to our class on the last day of school he was overwhelmed, eyes filled with tears of happiness, his gratefulness seemed as though Kasey had climbed the highest mountain.
I cried that day when his dad wanted to know which one of us was Mary; see Kasey was given pictures (animated from the pictures he learned to ask for things.) There were three aids and the teacher. Our pictures had our names on them. Kasey's father told us that Kasey would bring my picture to him many times during the evening; especially when it was, time to brush his teeth. His dad could not believe how far Kasey had come in one school year, and he was so happy his wife was coming home just 2 days after school let out. Telling us how happy she was going to be able to see how much their son had learned.
After seeing Kasey make so many baby steps that to his father were giant leaps, was so rewarding. I have always known that all of our special needs individuals are very special, and they all have something to offer someone in their lives. Meeting and knowing Kasey just reinforced what I have always known.
