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Besides the Church’s Adapted Needs seminary program which is operated by paid professionals, why doesn’t the church have a fireside on special needs and the family and more awareness activities especially in wards that have children with special needs. I know many people that have special needs children that feel like they are on the periphery in the church. On its professional level the church does a great job. I also have been in three wards out of four that do an excellent job to accomodate children with special needs (i.e. autism, Cerebral Palsy, MR, developmental disabilities, etc.) However, I am currently in a ward that it seems that a select few try to understand the child with disabilities. There are some Sundays I would rather just go home with my child after sacrament meeting, because I will have to be the one that make sure that he is “behaving according to the norm,” which is so tough for him. It seems that my son’s special day class in the public sector (obviously ran by trained professionals) does an excellent job. I just wish there was more awareness or trainings on a church level to at least get the word out-since every child, and person is worth a ton in the eyes of the Lord (the worth of soul’s is great) D&C 18:5? I remember the day when my son with Autism just got moved into Primary as a Sunbeam. I was thinking wow, this is really happening (but I was scared at the same time). I had just moved in the ward as a recently divorced with full-custody of a three year old child with autism. I remember the phone call I got how my son pinched another child in primary and how I was going to be asked to sit with him the next two hours of church (a bad idea). My son needs socialization and behavior modification from other adults in authority and not just me. A wise bishop made the decision to put a loving sister in charge of my son. This “savior” and saint without recognition from anyone but me, the Bishop, the Primary president and the Savior did an excellent job. I was able to enjoy the rest of my church meetings, get my temple recommend back and get fully active in the church and eventually remarry in the temple. If this decision had not been made, I would have stopped going to church after sacrament meeting and just stayed home. These are the types of decisions that Bishops, Primary Presidents, and those in authority on a local level need to make. I understand that on occasion I need to help out and talk to my son about how things are, but if he realizes that all he has to do is act out to get daddy he is manipulating the situation and will not progress socially and behaviorally. This is one area that our ward does really well. Most of my church service has been spent serving in the primary. We have MANY special need children dealing with physical, emotional and social problems of varying degrees. We only have 30 kids in our Primary and about 10-12 of them have special needs! (aspergers, autism, tourettes, brain injuries, heart defects, missing limbs, etc…) The church does have training resources available to educate teachers, but whether or not the wards take advantage is up to them. In our ward each year the primary presidency would hold a special teacher training day for all primary workers. Parents of special needs kids were often invited to come and help teach… giving us a better understanding of the needs of their children, and how we could best serve them. Teachers were also required to watch and complete some online video training courses that can be found on lds.org. It really has been a focus in our primary for the last several years. How we could better help these children was discussed at every presidency meeting we ever had. Perhaps we are doing so well because we have so many kids with needs. A ward with fewer special needs kids might find themselves overlooking these children. If you find yourself in a ward were they are lacking, a talk with the Primary President and Bishop would definitely not be out of line. You could even offer to help by giving a class on special needs. Our children are too important to not be honored and understood.
I have a son with multiple special needs and I’ve found a lot depends on the individual members of the ward and what they feel comfortable doing. We’ve had R.N.s in the past that have been a tremendous help taking him to primary and helping out in other activities. We’ve also been in situations where people were scared of him and we wound up keeping him with us the whole block. This is one area where I have a gripe about church policy. One former bishop told us to stop asking the members for help watching him outside of church. We went through a fairly rough stretch with our nursing agency where nurses weren’t reliably showing up when we requested respite care. A couple of ward members offered to learn how to care for him so we could go out on a date or do something fun with our other children once in awhile. The bishop found out about this and told us we were not to ask for help from the members or offer to train them, due to liability issues. We can ask other neighbors for help as long as they’re not members.
🙄 Quote:The bishop found out about this and told us we were not to ask for help from the members or offer to train them, due to liability issues. We can ask other neighbors for help as long as they’re not members.
*SIGH*Whether the Church is “true” or not, sometimes people say really stupid things. (There really isn’t anything more to say about that, to paraphrase the immortal Forest Gump.) Yeah, this one depends totally on the local ward or branch. Most of the ones I’ve attended have been sensitive and responsive to special needs, and my current ward includes a former Bishop with three sons in that situation.
Quote:“This is one area where I have a gripe about church policy. One former bishop told us to stop asking the members for help watching him outside of church.”
That’s very interesting. I don’t understand, you would think that members of the ward could help you watch him. No wonder my wife and I haven’t gone to the temple since we were sealed. The church wants people to serve as ward missionaries, serve in the temple, and do your home teaching. I guess since having your hands full with a special needs child would just make us serve them and our families. Maybe I just need to get the blessing of some general authority to say I am like “Church” exempt since it is very difficult to do anything productive for the church if I can never have anyone except a “paid professional” watch my special needs son. I like that, it is kind of like “tax exempt.” Oh well I guess it is wishful thinking.
Our local ward has several people in this category, and all well looked after AFAIK. I found an excellent article on this topic published through the Religious Studies Center at BYU in Volume 7 number 1 (2006) entitled “Welcoming All of God’s Children in his house”. This article is accessible on the web. It pretty much agreed with my sentiments exactly, I just wish it was codified or followed by the general church population.
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