This is not meant to attack peoples parenting skills, but I have noticed that parents of special needs individuals can be the worst enemy to their successes at times. The mistake is often made out of love, and to protect them – when in fact it really does grave harm.
I’m talking about that cute little box that parents of special needs children have put us in. While these cute little boxes are set up to protect us from failure, all they really do is insure failure. People with special needs have dreams just like every other person – some are to drive, to get married, to graduate high school, to get a job, etc. Every one of these things I was told I would not be able to do when growing up, I was put in the cute little box and told that its safer for me to stay in. To this day when I get a job, my mother objects and says I should just stay on SSI as its safer.
My fiance and I spent the night together last night, because I had no brakes on my car (yes I drive) until I could get them fixed today. Her biggest fear is that her mother says she won’t be able to do the stereotypical wifely duties, the cleaning, cooking etc. First off, I’m not fond of stereotypes but last night she proved her fears wrong. She cleaned my counter-tops just because she was bored and saw they needed to be cleaned. Now my point is not that there are stereotypical wifely duties, but that if she would of never been given the chance to get out of that box her mom set up for her, she would of not tried out of fear of failing.
My parents prohibited me from driving, saying my disability would make it too much. I had to learn behind their backs, and purchased my first car with a job I got behind their backs. Yet my brother has totaled 3 vehicles, has 1 DUI (and hes not even legally able to drink) yet they pay his insurance and buy him new vehicles every time he totals his. Yet just because I’m disabled I was stuck in this little box of safety, and not allowed to grow. Well I had to run away to get away from my box…. I was homeless for 6 months.
It really hurts me when I see parents put their special needs individuals in a little box of safety, instead of encouraging and supporting them to pursue their dreams. Because parents are so afraid of their children failing – they set them up for failure. Strange way of protecting them, don’t you think?
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
This is kind of late to reply to this, but my mother did it to me, except not with regular things like driving and cooking and cleaning. She just wanted me to learn at my own pace. It’s my lack of motivation that made me so dysfunctional. But now I’m medicated so I’m much better; I can actually sit down and write my books.
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My High School did that to me. They kept saying “We can’t put her in harder classes, they’ll stress her out too much”.
I was dying, in the classes they put me in, I would finish my work in 10 minutes and spend the rest of the class counting the cracks on the celing.
They also tried to talk my parents into sending me to a special program instead of college..
I am so glad my dad is not like that. He fought to get me into harder classes (Which I got As in BTW) and they supported my desision to go to college, (I’m at college right now and I am doing well).
While that little box is supposed to help, more often than not, it hurts the person inside of it instead. My Dad understood that and for that I am forever grateful.
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Hi, Sadderbutwisergirl. (I recognise your name from the autistics.org board)
I’m sorry you seem to be getting put in one of those “(not so) cute little boxes”
I’m not personally familiar enough with you/your family to make any kind of judgment call on driving/job things specifically, but in general I think if a person is “in-tune” with themselves, familiar with their strengths, weaknesses, etc. they are the most reliable person to guess whether something will be “too much” for them or not, like a job, of course there would be exceptions to this. But in general. The only way to know for sure about a job thing, or a driving thing, though, would be to try it. Sometimes in a safer environment than the real thing, like driving school (people don’t just go straight to driving in traffic, first they see if they can learn to operate the car, then they work up to driving on roads, etc…)
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That sounds kind of familiar because my mom is doing that to me. She isn’t letting me get a job ecause she’s saying that it will be too much for me. She’s also not letting me enroll in a driving course (I want this because I’ll be old enough for my permit in July and a driving course is one of the requirements) because she’s saying that I can’t manage my anger well enough to be trusted behind the wheel of a car. This is ironic because both my brothers think that my mom lashes out at them for less reason than I do and that she does worse things to them when she gets angry. What do you think of this?
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You’re right of course. I hope I’m not one of those ‘box’ parents. I definately understand the need to let my children spread their wings. Please understand, though, that these parents really are trying to do what’s best. The worrying that we do makes it really hard to let go. Hopefully, parents will read what you’ve written and take a look at how they approach these things with their children.
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