Talking to your child about inclusion

 How boring would it be if flowers came in only one shade? Or, all food tasted the same? What if there was only one genre of music?

We should celebrate that differences can make things more vibrant.

I was inspired to do this post when last year, my grandson Elliot’s sweet public school hosted their first Ability Awareness Fair. This is my daughter Lauren’s wheel house. She actually founded a company called Inclusive Arts.

Her mission centers around supporting opportunities for folks with disabilities to enjoy and participate in creative and performing arts.

Most frequently she is hired to offer workshops about what inclusion can look like in practice, in a wide variety of settings, including schools.

Her thesis statement is this: Everyone experiences the world in different ways.

No bodies are exactly the same when it comes to size, shape, strength, what they can and cannot do, and no brains are exactly the same either. One way that our brains might be different from others is how we respond to the different sensory inputs around us.

If you are talking to your child, or a group of kids, take a quick poll:

Hearing: Raise your hand if you like to listen to loud music. Say “shhh” if you prefer things a little on the quieter side, or need silence to concentrate.

Sight: Do you like being in a place with lots of bright flashing lights? Or do they make you want to close your eyes? (Hello Chuckie Cheese, Dave & Busters or the Chase Center during a Valkyries game)

Touch: Give yourself a hug (or massage!) Do you like the feeling of pressure on your body?

(Lauren has trained EJ to give a really excellent back rub)

Some people might hate the feeling of a tag on their clothes, etc… while others don’t even notice.

Smell: How sensitive are you to a yucky smell? The tolerance for this varies greatly. The parent who claims that changing a stinky diaper is torture, might really be having a hard time.

Taste: Are you open to tasting an array of flavors? Spicy food?

For older kids, you can start to teach them about the additional hidden senses our bodies have. This would include vestibular (balance) and proprioception (our awareness of where our body is in relation to itself and the things around it)

Explain that all these differences — our senses, what makes us feel stressed, what makes us feel calm, even how we communicate with others — are called ‘neurodiversity.’ Break the word apart: Neuro means relating to the brain and diversity relates to differences. All brains are different. There is no such thing as one right way to think or act or communicate, and no such thing as a wrong way either.

Ask kids how they prefer to calm down when they feel stressed. Everyone has a different way to soothe themselves.

Now that kids are back in school, it can be useful to dig deeper into these conversations in a safe place where your kids have permission to name things they noticed and ask any questions without fear of judgment.

It’s a good time to remind kids that everyone is different. They might have different hair, different colored skin, different language, different sizes, different families, different beliefs and different abilities.

When it comes to disability and neurodiversity, you can ask if they noticed any differences in the way students behaved, listened, moved… Continue the dialogue about how being different doesn’t mean bad.

It is a great exercise after noticing that someone is different to follow up with finding things in common.

Everyone needs to eat, sleep, breathe and poop. Most people want to have a friend.

From there, it can be really valuable to start talking about empathy, and what it might mean to be inclusive when it looks like maybe a difference is making something harder for a student.

Since Lauren has hands-on experience teaching about inclusion and neurodiversity to general education students, she immediately offered her services to EJ’s school. She supported them in developing a program that would be appropriate for transitional kindergarden - 5th grade students.

The ability awareness fair had 3 separate stations, each focusing on a different aspect of neurodiversity:

• Different Ways to Communicate,

• Tools for Bodies and Brains,

• Inclusive Play and Adaptation.

In each station they had activities to demonstrate what inclusion might look like for students with different needs, and also took time to let the students brainstorm their own ideas for how they might modify activities in different scenarios:

How might you play catch/tag/yard games with someone who uses a wheelchair?

How many different ways can you think of to give someone directions if they are deaf or hard of hearing?

How many different ways can you communicate that you have an unmet need (hunger, need to use the bathroom, etc…) without actually using words (signs, gestures, pointing, images, etc…)?

How can you show up as a friend?

When highlighting how difference is valuable, it’s crucial to not chastise someone for a difference of opinion, especially when it usually simply comes from a knowledge gap.

Lauren emphasizes the importance in these conversations of letting the young people have ownership over their ideas, and not shutting down any of their suggestions. When she asked a question about if it’s fair to let someone use a tool that might make a task easier for them, and a student said it felt unfair, instead of lecturing them on why they are wrong, Lauren simply asked more questions, and invited the other students to offer their input.

While of course EJ was thrilled to have mommy in his class, for everyone else, the Ability Awareness Fair far exceeded expectations.

After the event, when she reported back to me about how well it went, I was struck by how essential this is.

Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, inclusivity shouldn’t be a dirty word. If we can teach our kids at this age to be sensitive to differences our world would be a better place.

Are you interested in bringing a program like this to your kids’ school? Lauren would love to hear from you.

I am so grateful to Lauren for helping me get this one written and for making the world a better place for so many people.