How to Help Children With Disabilities to Feel Included in the Classroom
The leaves have started to brown and fall from the trees, the nights are drawing in, the smell of autumn is in the air – it’s the start of a new school year again. For many children, this September will be their first year at school.
Starting school involves a lot of new experiences. One new experience may be having a child in their class who has some kind of disability – nine per cent of children have a disability and there are 14.6 million people with a disability in the UK.
Disabilities can be visible (such as having a limb missing, having cerebral palsy or Down’s syndrome) and invisible, or hidden (such as epilepsy, diabetes or mental health issues). Invisible disabilities can be harder to recognise, deal with and to know how to react to, especially for children.
How Can Parents Teach Their Children How to Understand Disabilities?
A child may ask awkward or embarrassing questions if they see someone who looks visibly different to them. So, if your child comes home from school and says, ‘Why is Jack in my class in a wheelchair?’ and you’re not sure how to handle the situation, here are some tips.
Try to explain things calmly and matter-of-factly: ‘Jack’s legs don’t work as well as yours, so the wheelchair helps him get around.’
Encourage your child to ask their new friend questions. If they don’t want to, encourage them to ask you or their class teacher instead. Many children with disabilities will be happy to answer questions, but some will not – and that’s OK. Your child should follow their new classmate’s lead and be polite. Perhaps remind them not to pester their new classmate with questions.
You may not know the answer to your child’s questions about their new classmate. In this case, you could look for child-friendly websites that offer information about any disability that your child may have questions about, then read these together.
You could also read some age-appropriate books about disabilities with your child. Books featuring characters with disabilities help to represent people with disabilities and make them feel more seen.
Here is some more great advice for explaining disabilities to your child.
How Children Can Include Everyone
The most important thing to tell your child is to be kind, and to treat someone with a disability as they would like to be treated themselves. Encourage your child to talk to the new child just as they would anyone else: ‘What’s your name? Where do you live? What do you like playing with?’
You could encourage older children to ask their new classmate to eat lunch with them. They could also talk to them if your child sees them standing alone, or spend break-time with them.
We Are All Alike…
It’s a good idea to point out to your child that people with disabilities are just like everyone else – their disability is only one part of them. You could say something like, ‘Sarah likes playing Scrabble, just like you do, and you both find the same jokes funny.’ If your child understands that they are the same as a person with a disability, they will become more empathetic to others.
What Not to Do
It goes without saying, but ask your child not to stare at a person with a disability, call them names or ignore them.
Disability is No Barrier to Success
You could talk to your child about famous people who have disabilities. Tell your child that many people have achieved great things and had happy, successful lives despite having a disability. You could talk to them about the famous scientist Stephen Hawking, all the amazing athletes who compete at the Paralympics, such as Ellie Simmonds and Tanni Grey-Thompson, and actors such as Warwick Davies and Tommy Jessop.
If you’re a parent of a child with a disability, or if you’d like to find out more about a disability, you might find it helpful to read one of these blogs.
Being kind to others means that everyone will be happier, and will feel welcome and included. Enjoy the start of the new school term!