How to Help Your Child Self-Advocate
She looks at me. I wonder what she is thinking, as I can see her wheels are turning, trying to process what I’ve said. She seems at a loss for words, or is unsure she should say what is on her mind. She responds with yes when I ask her if she’s ok. But as I reflect back on this talk with my daughter, I realize something:
She was nervous.
My daughter had received a surprisingly low grade in math, one that shocked us both. It appeared her grade suffered because of missing work, work my daughter insisted she completed and turned in but somehow went MIA. I told her she should talk with her teacher, explaining she completed the work and thought she had turned it in. Could her teacher work with her to find the missing assignments?
Easier said than done, for a twelve-year-old. Could I, as an adult in my daughter’s shoes, have approached another adult (in this case, a teacher) about this problem? Sure. (At least I think so.) But my daughter is a tween, and recommending an adult-sized plan to work her problem is intimidating…a plan where she stands up for herself and asks for help from her teacher while mildly implying the work possibly could have been misplaced on her teacher’s desk. No wonder my daughter looked at me, speechless and hesitant. She wasn’t even sure about speaking up with me, her own mom, who was not upset with the math grade and wanted to help.
Self-advocacy, not so easy. Not for anybody. Especially not for kids.
In last week’s post, Show Kids You Care: Become Their Advocate, I gave some starter advice on how to advocate for others, because if we adults become comfortable with advocacy, we can help our kids learn this tough but necessary skill. And how necessary it is. Learning to self-advocate promotes self-confidence and independence. Kids feel empowered to problem-solve and own their learning, lives and decisions. So we parents can’t start too early helping our kids to “own it.”
Wow, how I wish I’d known that ten years ago.
And realize that asking for something you want and asking for something you need are not necessarily the same thing.
I was lulled into the idea of natural self-advocacy during the Great Sticker Obsession of 2009. One of my sons, a hoarder on a mission, loved stickers. He could walk up to anyone behind a counter and ask for them. The conversation would go something like this:
My son “A”: Hi. What’s your name?
Adult behind counter: I’m (insert name here). What’s your name?
A: I’m A. Do you have kids?
Adult: Yes, I do.
A: Do you have any stickers?
A real smooth operator, my four-year-old. A little schmoozing, then BAM! Cut to the chase. And darn it, if even the twenty-something dude at the local marina could dig up some treasure for “A”. My husband and I still laugh about his chuztpah in his quest for stickers. And believed he was a natural in the human relations department. Self-advocacy seemed to come naturally to him.
Nope, not really. He wanted the stickers and just asked for them: want stickers, ask for stickers, get the stickers (and remember to say thank you). But needing help, support and assistance is a totally different ballgame because it is admitting you’ve got something on your plate you can’t handle alone. Self-advocating, asking someone to take the time, real amounts of time, to help you out, is no easy task. It’s the difference between flag football and gridiron, kick-the-can and soccer, and pick-up basketball in the park and the NBA playoffs. Self-advocacy is the big leagues, for getting support for a need takes more practice and finesse than asking for something you want or crave.
So how can we help kids learn to self-advocate?
~We start off by reassuring our children that asking for help is a good thing. It doesn’t mean failure. It means they are not willing to take accept problems laying down. They are willing to work to overcome them.
~We help kids learn self-awareness. We talk with them about things they do well and about their struggles…classes at school, social situations, emotions. Identifying their strengths and weaknesses and becoming more self-aware helps kids learn to problem-solve and discover what support they need to succeed.
~We role-play. Practice what to say in a safe, non-threatening environment. As an example, let’s use my daughter and her missing math homework. I should have helped her by having her practice what to say on me, playing the role of her teacher. This would have given her confidence in stating her concerns, and practice in responding to her teacher in a way that would recruit her help.
~We encourage kids to be involved. Allowing kids a say in their learning, and a voice in other aspects of their lives gives kids the opportunity to speak up and practice communicating their viewpoints. Teens who volunteer and/or take on a part-time job also get additional opportunities to hone self-advocacy.
~We help kids understand their rights, and help them (through role-play) to verbally express what those rights are. If your child has learning differences be sure to check out the details of Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and share the tenets with your child in an age-appropriate way.
~We help our kids set goals. These can be short-term, like how and when to get the week’s math assignment done on time, or long-term, like how to get into his first-choice college. No matter how big or small, plan out how to reach goals. Not only will this help your child practice organizational skills, but setting goals and having a clear vision of where he wants to go will help him self-advocate along the way.
Of course there’s more. Check out these links on advocacy and self-advocacy:
This link provides some verbiage ideas for kids to use when advocating in a school environment: www.understood.org/en/friends-feelings/empowering-your-child/self-advocacy/self-advocacy-sentence-starters-for-kids-with-different-learning-and-attention-issues
