I stood by the curb and watched Nava work hard at climbing down from our mini-van. Although this certainly wasn’t the first time my mother witnessed ‘this torture’ I was imposing, she expressed her annoyance at me for being “so tough” on her. Her idea was, “give her a hand to make it easier; you see how slow and tentative she’s being because it’s so difficult.” I heard these types of comments a lot from my mother throughout the years – “don’t let her struggle so; have a heart”.
I never really questioned whether or not I “had a heart”, although it did bug me when she said it in her various ways. I knew where this came from; it came from her parenting belief that a Good mother does everything for her child and always looks to make it easier. (This is certainly a common practice nowadays where many parents enable kids to death by being ‘helicopter parents; but more on that in another post.) I simply had a different view on raising kids, and certainly one with disabilities.
Since my main goal for Nava was for her to grow to be as independent as possible, then my plan of action was to encourage her to do all that she could for herself, even if it proved to be difficult.
For it’s in the struggle that we grow and push out beyond our realm of comfort. A beautiful example of this is the butterfly story.
When Nava was in rehab relearning every motor function, her physical therapy was pretty gruesome. It was also painful for me to watch her struggle, to stand for instance, each time vomiting because her balance was so off. But she had to push through it to slowly get stronger and better at it. And she did.
Having a goal and knowing where you want to go, helps you cope with the {difficult} means of getting there.
After Nava had an ileostomy, which requires her to wear a pouch, she went through months of being taught to manipulate this apparatus on her own. I was not sure she could actually do this by herself because of her weak fine motor skills. But with the help, encouragement, patience and coaching skills of wonderful ostomy nurses, Nava miraculously learned to manage her ileostomy completely on her own.
So what can we do to enable less and encourage growth more?
Witnessing the struggle towards independence:
- A You Can Do attitude
- Take a breath and hold your tongue
- Step back and watch the struggle
- Patience
- Hold tight onto your rescue hands
- Verbally encourage and praise each step of the way
- Guide, teach, but don’t do
What small struggle can you stand by and watch?
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