Sunday, August 3, 2014

All By Myself

Pervasive Parenting 
By Kodey Toney

All By Myself

I had someone give me some good advice this week that I have tried to do, but I guess I've forgotten recently. Konner has been taking golf lessons this summer and has really enjoyed it. Since I am off on Fridays I took him, and his counselor pulled me to the side to tell me that I should let him do things for himself. 
Now, I know this, and try to let him be as independent as possible, but as I stood there trying to figure out why he would say that I realized that I was carrying his golf clubs for him. I was only doing it to help because it was taking a long time for him to get from hole to hole, but I knew he was right. He had several other golfers in his group and none if them had their parents walking around with them; let alone carrying their bag. 
Our ultimate goal for Konner is to be as independent as possible. This is why we work so hard at school to let him do his work himself. This is why we try to get him to do chores like cleaning up after himself. The therapies are so that he doesn't need assistance down the road with socializing or using fine-motor skills. Yet, here I am following him around the course being his personal caddy. 
I will say that before we started out in the course I had asked if he wanted me to go out with him or if he wanted me to stay in and he asked me to join him. Perhaps that is because he wanted me to lug his equipment around, but I thought it was because he wanted me there for comfort reasons. 
Either way I was doing way too much. We have to let our kids with disabilities do as much as they can for themselves. They, like any other kids, are manipulative if you let them. They will have you do everything if you don't watch it. Konner 's favorite line when it comes time to clean is, "It's too hard." Of course, to be fair, that is Kruz's excuse too, and probably any other child's if they can get away with it. 
Make sure you're doing what you can to help, but not too much.

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