It was good eyewash to attend yesterday’s webinar organized by Nayi Disha and presented by Dr. Nina Vaidya, a very apt person for the job! Dr. Vaidya is pediatrician from Navsari(Gujarat) and mom of a special 27 yrs daughter, Palak who she has successfully trained to work in clinical environment !!!
Of course it is difficult journey for a parent to accept his/her child in first few years after the diagnosis. However the real battle begins on how we approach this question of at least partially main-streaming the child with society through various means including meaningful vocational activity. Every parent would unanimously agree on the benefits of vocational training during teenage years. However, Dr. Vaidya pointed the pre-vocational skills is an important area where lot of special parents fall short of.
Dr. Vaidya shared a comprehensive check-list or pre-vocational skills that every special parent has to pay attention. It includes various aspects of how independent our child is to face the uncertain and maneuver through the dynamic world at large. Some of the key points are –
Child’s understanding of private vs public and acceptable vs un-acceptable behavioral norms in society at large
Ability to comprehend time, modes of measurements and directions, maps & traffic signals.
Understand importance of money, safety of money and some sense of daily requirements in terms of expenses.
Appropriate communication skills to handle situations in workplace and social circles.
How to seek help at the time of crisis and to some extent develop understanding about situations that jeopardize personal safety
Learn to adapt own behavior with the requirements at workplace and also some sense of flexibility and prioritizing in given environment.
Dr. Vaidya had given one example of her daughter, Palak when she started to work at her clinic between 9 am to 1 pm. Generally, special children tend to be very methodic and tend to be bound to their routines meticulously. As Palak was working as assistant at front desk and cash collections, she would leave exactly at 1 pm regardless of patients waiting at the clinic. Later on Dr. Vaidya had to train her for few weeks for her to understand and develop flexibility. This is a very simple example; but gives a sense of how every smaller aspect needs our attention and patience to work through.
For developing required sense, vision and resolve she posed few questions that we as special parent need find our own answers and accordingly make a sustainable financial plan.
Why do we want to impart vocational training to our child?
What portion of his/her expected expenses that child could earn on his/her own?
How to we plan to address the shortfall in the expense. In other words, do we have a financial plan in place? In a way, it is a better question to grapple with instead of worrying about “what happens after us?”
For a special parent all this seems rather daunting. Obviously there are lot of merits to train our kids vocationally whether keeping them involved meaningfully or improving their self esteem & confidence. But the point is it’s a very gradual process; so we have to commit to it from the get-go. Obviously first 8-10 years would be spent mainly to get the child settled in age and IQ-appropriate educational set up. However as Stephen Covey, the famous author of “7 Habits of Highly Successful People” suggests, one needs to begin with the end in mind. So it would be ideal if parents could devote themselves to develop pre-vocational skills in child as early as 9-10 years of age. We have to involve our kids in various day to day activities, give them lot of exposure to various situations and slowly but surely nurture them to become responsible individual regardless of the types of job skills they could delve into.
Finally, lot of parents fret about choosing right vocation. Children with developmental disabilities tend to do well with manual and repetitive tasks which require hands-on activities. There could be many potential vocations that would serve well whether it is in hotels, food industry, house-keeping / cleaning industry and so on. One of the key personality traits these individuals exhibit is they like to work diligently with lot of instructions without getting impatient. This makes them suitable to work as assistant or helper in any hands-on activity!
Personally I have visited a factory in Pune area where the owner, Mr. Subhash Chuttar has trained more than 50 special individuals to work in the factory as machine operators and they are working full time making automobile parts for MNC companies like Bosch and that too with zero rejection (Zero PPM). Unbelievable, right!!! All credit goes to Mr. Chuttar and his patience to work through all the hurdles in training them which takes rather long time. He gleams with smile and adds “Once trained, these guys are most dependable and will never put you down”
One of the very well known special educators in Pune, Mrs. Sunita Lele once pointed out to me that special parents often talk about their right to have work opportunities for special children; but is it NOT our responsibility to make our kids more employable first. We were talking about Lemon Tree hotel in Mumbai employing special adults for house-keeping work.
Along the same line, Dr. Vaidya suggested that it is ok to keep searching for the vocation our child would enjoy and be interested in. But we should always try to balance out with availability and safety in addition to more practical aspects such as remuneration, distance and working hours. She added, “It’s even more important to create correct mindset and attitude of children so that they become employable and productive citizens of tomorrow no matter how miniscule their contributions seems!!!”
-- Sachin Jakhotia / Bavdhan, Pune
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