Hello, my name is David Poeschl and I'm a parent advisor with Matrix Parents. This is another in our series of monthly podcasts for the 2024 2025 school year. Today we're going to talk about self-advocacy, and we're going to do it in the lens of how learning good self-advocacy skills can lead to life success for students with disabilities. So let's take a look, first of all, at a definition of self-advocacy.

I like this one, which is the action of representing oneself or one's views or interests. So what we found is that people, students in particular with disabilities that can express their views, they can speak up for themselves, they can follow through with things that life success is much more common for them because they learn these skills and research out the Frostig Center, which is a center in Pasadena that does research on learning disabilities as well as a lot of other major studies, including by the Federal Department of Education.

They focus on identifying which factors contribute to success for individuals and more generally, all people with disabilities. And the one commonality of their success, again, is the fact that these people learned self-advocacy skills in high school or at a relatively young age. So let's take a look at what the attributes are there self-awareness, proactivity, perseverance. Goal Setting. The presence and use of effective support systems and emotional coping strategies.

And we're going to take a look at each one of those and to see what the research says and talk about them a little bit. So let's talk about self-awareness first. The thing that I study there was a study done by an organization called LDA Online. And what the study found when they interviewed large numbers of people with learning disabilities, this is as far as 20 years down the line from the time that these people were students.

And what they found was that almost all of the people they spoke to were very open and specific about their strengths and weaknesses. They could discuss them very easily. But probably one of the key elements regarding self-awareness was the successful individuals ability to do what we call compartmentalize their disability. So what this means really is that they're able to see their difficulties as only one aspect of themselves.

They're not overly defined by their difficulties. Okay. Let's take a look at the next one, which is proactivity. Proactivity speaks to once engagement involved and involvement in all aspects of life in school. This could be taught by working on identifying those times and situations that cause stress and also those times when a student is successful. So in this way, as students able to engage with their life in a way that's more planned and structured than they would otherwise, a therapist or a teacher in the student can devise strategies to deal with the successful situation and celebrate the successes.

Proactivity can't be defined then as being able to foresee and plan for the future. It means not only things like financial planning, but also social emotional planning in a sometimes confusing world for people with disabilities. Now let's go to persistence. Studies have shown that persistence has the attributes of both sticking to a plan, but also the ability to rethink, to adjust and even give up on something.

So it's the ability to apply cost, a sunk cost theory. This the what this does is that you think of a person that's able to persist in something, but also has that recognition, that self-awareness, that ability to see if something's working or not, and to make course corrections halfway through or again, just abandon a project, if that's what it calls for.

Goal setting is the next item. Goal setting and goal attainment or foundational self advocacy skills. Students with disabilities should begin learning these skills in late elementary school years and continue to learn and practice these skills throughout their remaining school years. So good way to do that is by having a student getting involved in their IEP process. At a young age, a child can come into the IEP and introduce themselves, say something they like.

Later on in elementary school, they can become a little bit more involved. Or maybe they know what an accommodation is, that they have middle school. They become more involved. And then by high school they should be helping develop goals and know precisely what their accommodations are and to be able to self advocate for those. So let's look at the next slide, which is the presence and use of effective support systems.

And this comes from the North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities. And what they say that they feel that the best way for a person to develop those support systems is to contribute to one's community. Also, having a financial plan for the present in the future. Empowered decision making through collaboration with others, having a safe and comfortable home, having companionship and a sense of belonging and independence and self esteem and safety in your community.

And so what they're saying is that all of these go into what a successful life is. And that is a part of that is becoming involved in the community, becoming involved in agencies that the person is working with so that they have that support system, They're able to maintain it. And the best way to start that again is to find out what you can do to contribute to people around you.

Relationships are not created by need. They're created based on sharing gifts and interests and experiences that are meaningful, that create meaningful connections with others. Let's look at emotional coping strategies and emerge from the stress that the people with disabilities often feel. Difficulty sleeping. Headaches. Anxiety is usually a significant one. Chest pains, impatience and irritability, high blood pressure, self-isolation, which is also a very serious concern.

Difficulty concentrating and nausea. And the way really to counteract some of these, again, is to maintain the support system so that there's someone that you can that the person can turn to engaging in hobbies. Taking care of animals is a good one. Watching a favorite show or movie. Spending time outside. Getting moving and speaking to a professional again that that support system.

How can you help your child now? So in young elementary years, it's important that your child have choices, that they're given a sense of control and so they can earn rewards for behaviors, for instance, or have a plan in advance that prevents power struggles. So in other words, the parent becomes part of the plan and the parent and the child are both subject to that plan.

And that takes away a lot of the power struggles. If you're interested more in that, take a look at our Positive Behavior Support podcast. You can start conversations about the child's strengths and challenges, but focus on the strengths through activities and play. For instance, if they're a builder of visual spatial learner Legos for others that you know, have the sports that would have that strength of reading for visual learners, they would be movies and other types of activities.

And as you get older, you should start going to their IEP meetings and starting with a limited experience where they're going into the meeting and possibly introducing themselves and meeting the members of the IEP team. But later they're having increasing participation and at the end again in high school, they're participating fully in their process. Educate them on the gifts that disabilities can bring.

We talk about scattered profiles or spiky profiles for children when they're doing testing. And so, for instance, we may find a child that has low spelling skills or writing skills, but has really good visual spatial skills or very good communication skills. And so what we see are these, yes, there are challenges, but also there's very high levels of talent in other areas.

So it's important to find those talents that your child has and teach them about them and get them involved in activities that are promoted by those talents. Well, that's it for this broadcast of this podcast. Thank you very much. We very much appreciate you joining us. Take care. And we'll see you next time. Bye now.

References:
North Carolina Council on Developmental Disabilities
https://nccdd.org/images/article/initiatives/FullCircle_Booklet_FamilyFriends.pdf

Teaching “Life Success” to Students with LD: Lessons Learned From a 20-Year Study. Marshall H. Raskind, Roberta J. Goldberg, Eleanor l. Higgins, and Kenneth L. Herman
Frostig Center: https://frostigschool.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Teaching-Life-Success-2002-Raskind-et-al.pdf
 
LD OnLine: https://www.ldonline.org/ld-topics/self-esteem-stress-management/success-attributes-among-individuals-learning-disabilities
 
Emotional coping strategies contributed by: Covey.org. https://covey.org/coping-strategies/