Approaching home life as a member of a family with special needs

If your son, or, let’s face it, your husband, has recently been diagnosed with special needs, you may be worried that life is more difficult to manage now. The truth is, it’s about to get a lot easier. The diagnosis changes nothing about the problems you have today, except that it gives you an entity to blame, disability, and gives you great insight into how to change your current habits to adapt. Here are some classic examples:

Put everything in writing and in public

Learning and attention disabilities affect both children and adults in a predictable way: It causes their memory to malfunction, most often for things that interest them the least. You’ve probably heard the term “selective memory”: For people with these disabilities, that’s a horrible truth, because your memory is really selective…it’s just not under your control! So posting reminders of what who (and when) is supposed to do in a common area like the refrigerator or bathroom mirror should become a habit for everyone.

Leverage each person’s strengths and admit each person’s weaknesses

Each disability is slightly different and leads the person dealing with it to behave slightly differently. The big challenge here is getting the disabled person to admit that no, they really don’t have the ability to handle money (or detailed work like folding laundry, or sustained effort like rearranging the pantry, or whatever). Once each person can relinquish control over those areas for which they are simply not equipped, tasks can be reassigned based on strengths and tasks that do not have a ‘strong’ individual can be assigned to the family as a whole to be supervised collectively.

Allow everyone to be self-sufficient

Each person in a family with special needs will need their own tools to take as much control as possible. In a family with a hyperactive child, an inattentive father, and a physically disabled but executively strong mother, for example:

• The child can have a set of refrigerator magnets to move around indicating which tasks are done and which ones remain to be done.

• The parent may have a phone or other device loaded with a calendar app, an alarm clock app, and a list-keeping app that allows them to keep track of daily tasks using alarms, one-time tasks using the calendar, and things like lists shopping using the list application.

• The mother can have a walker that can be used as a stool and a chair, to allow her to do basic work around the house while maintaining the ability to sit when and where needed and reach high shelves for any necessities. arise.

When each person is given the tools they need to function without constant assistance, the expectation of self-sufficiency becomes the culture and everyone benefits.

Don’t take anything too seriously

This is probably the most important piece of advice for a family with multiple different disabilities who interact on a day-to-day basis. Learning to recognize when your disability has appeared, point it out, and laugh about it is the most powerful tool to improve your chances of long-term success, whatever your definition of success.