ENG 100 UOP Concept of Risk and Dignity & Parenting Responsibility Thesis Paper What is your proposed thesis statement for your upcoming assignment, and wh

ENG 100 UOP Concept of Risk and Dignity & Parenting Responsibility Thesis Paper What is your proposed thesis statement for your upcoming assignment, and what evidence could you include to support your statement? schools
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THE DIGNITY OF RISK
GOING TO COLLEGE
BY JACKIE SCHWABE
Many parents are not educated on the concept of dignity of risk when we are told our
child has an intellectual or developmental disability. Our lack of education and training
around dignity of risk can unwittily make us
complicit in impeding our child’s ability to
become a contributing, valued, and respected
member of society. Learning how to support
prudent risk taking could be the determining
factor on whether our children go to college or
live in our basement for the rest of our lives.
20 March 2019 • EP Magazine | ep-magazine.com
HELICOPTER PARENT
F E A R O F FA L L I N G
It was a beautiful day. I should have brought my sunglasses, but
my “baby-brain” was in full force; the little guy was expected in
about four weeks. I held my two-year-old daughter on top of the
baby bump as we left the applied behavior therapy clinic where I
was told she was “at least” moderately autistic. After dropping my
daughter off with the babysitter, I went back to the office and I
mourned.
I mourned the loss of seeing her get married, watching her go
to college, or helping her move into her own home. My only
desire now was to protect her from the cruel world that was taking away her future. This was my entry into helicopter parenting.
I already had three children and I was expecting the fourth.
The day before diagnosis day I would have
been described as a laid-back parent. Yet,
only 24 hours later, I was swooping in at
any sign my daughter might be experiencing a challenge or discomfort. I was
scared she was going to fall when she toewalked. I was afraid, somehow, that anything she tried to do was going to hurt her
irrevocably.
PRACTICAL PARENTING
TO BUSY TO HOVER
All at the same time, the new baby was
born in September, 40 hours a week of inhome applied behavior therapy (ABA) started and the older children started school.
While at the time I was cursing the universe for giving me so much to handle at
one time, it was probably the beginning of
the practical parenting lessons that I needed to learn by being thrown into real life.
While I was nursing the new baby, I
couldn’t run after my daughter everywhere
she went. Sometimes she would trip and
fall right on her face. She would cry and
then she would get up. I couldn’t help her
put on her socks the exact moment she
wanted them put on, so she figured out
how to do it herself. Too busy to hover, my
helicopter crashed, and I was just trying to
stay alive somedays.
ENTER LIMITING BELIEF
MINE, NOT HERS
While I mourned what my daughter
couldn’t do and tried to protect her from
failure, it seemed she didn’t share my limiting beliefs. Day after day she did what I
thought she could not, until one day I had
to sit back and realize that perhaps with
my well-intentioned desire to protect my
daughter, I was holding her back from not
only failure, but also from the possibility of
success.
Thankfully my daughter didn’t mourn
the things she would not do, because no
one told her she couldn’t. Luckily, I kept
my fears to myself and my mouth shut as it
related to this particular topic. It was now
my job to figure out how to get over my
own limiting beliefs about what she could
or could not do.
GETTING EDUCATED
DIGNITY OF RISK
In the quest to support my daughter, as
well as my other three children, I began a
quest to find all the resources, tools, and
support I could unearth. While I am
embarrassed to admit it, it took about five
years for me to stumble on to the idea of
self-determination and dignity of risk.
Dignity of Risk was first articulated in
1972 in an article written by Robert Perske
called “The Dignity of Risk and the
Mentally Retarded.” While I am not a big
fan of the “R” word, I appreciated Perske’s
point of view. Perske advised that while we
think we are being kind by protecting our
children, we are really being evil. We are
stripping our children of their dignity and
keeping them from being all they can
become.
Like Perske,
Julian Wolpert
wrote an article
in 1980 called
“The Dignity of
Risk”, considered by some to
be
seminal
research on this
topic. Wolpert
said our patern a l i s t i c
approach to disabled
people
that prioritizes
safe guarding
them over their
rights as individuals to be independent
decision makers is a limitation we place on
their personal freedom.
RIGHT TO CHOOSE
W H AT D O I N D I V I D U A L S
W I T H A D I S A B I L I T Y WA N T ?
There was a lot of research and education about all the things that I needed to
stop doing, but I wanted to know what I
could do to help her be her best self. After
all, the result of disallowing my daughter
the freedom to fail created a high probability of developing low self-esteem and
underachievement, according to Wolpert.
What could I do different to make an
impact?
Whenever I am at a loss for what to do or
how to approach something, I tell myself to
K.I.S.S – keep it simple sweetie. I needed to
reframe the problem so I could find a new
way to look at the solution. What was the
problem? What do individuals with an
intellectual or developmental disability
want from life? Ah, and there it was.
The United Nations Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities’ first of
eight guiding principles states that persons
with disabilities have the right to “respect
for inherent dignity, individual autonomy
including the freedom to make one’s own
choices and independence …” They want
what everyone wants, the freedom to
choose.
FALLING OFF YOUR BIKE
W H AT I S D I G N I T Y O F R I S K ?
If everyone wants the freedom to
choose, how do I support allowing my
daughter to make her own choices? All the
same old limiting beliefs came
back into my
thoughts. Could
she make her
own choices?
How could she
make her own
choices? What if
she falls? What
if she fails?
What if she gets
hurt?
Then
I
remembered
the first time I
rode a bike. I
was already in
second grade. All of my friends already had
a bike. My parents told me that I should
wear shoes when learning how to ride my
bike, but I didn’t listen. I skinned the top
part of my big toe off shortly after their
warning. They tried to tell me, but I got
hurt anyway. I learned by natural consequences.
Natural consequences made me think of
natural supports. In our community we are
always talking about how we can provide
our children natural supports. One of those
natural supports is to let our children skin
their knees even if we know better.
Essentially that is dignity of risk. Many of
the best achievements were achieve the
hard way and they involved taking risks,
falling flat on our faces sometimes, and
even some suffering. Yet, we all got back
up and tried again.
OUR JOB IS TO
PROTECT THEM
W H AT P R U D E N T R I S K ?
This idea of allowing my daughter to fail
was really hard for me to consider. I’ve
ep-magazine.com | EP Magazine • March 2019 21
tried to protect all my children from so
many things. I made them hold my hand
when we walked across a parking lot. I told
them to blow on their food so they wouldn’t burn their tongue. How far do we take
this natural consequence thing?
Penske gave us the answer in his 1972
article: prudent risk. He even went to far as
to say that healthy development requires
risk taking and that there could be crippling indignity in safety. He hypothesized
that prudent risk was a new skill that
everyone needed to acquire for the sake of
our children and our society.
What is prudent risk? I know you all
want me to give you a step by step guide on
how to determine what things you should
allow and what you should not allow.
Unfortunately, I can’t do that. But I can tell
you how I define prudent risk. Prudent risk
is showing care and thought for the future
when taking a chance.
So not, we don’t throw caution to the
wind. If your child is water-seeking, for
heaven’s sake don’t just leave them to wander alone in a water park in hopes that the
22 March 2019 • EP Magazine | ep-magazine.com
natural consequence of nearly drowning
will teach them. You have to consider for
yourself what chances are acceptable and
what are not. They won’t die if they
skinned their toe, so perhaps if they don’t
heed your warning about riding their bike
without shoes, you let that one be a learning experience. They may get seriously
injured running into the street, so perhaps
don’t provide a warning in this case and
hold their hand even if they don’t want you
do.
WHAT IF THEY DO?
GOING TO COLLEGE
I have no idea what the future might
bring for any of my children. There is
some joy and happiness in the not knowing. My limiting beliefs will sneak in
once in a while and I’ll have to slow
down and reconsider. Now, more often
than not, I think how we will support my
daughter if she wants to get married, go
to college, or move into her own home.
Even reading it reworded like that brings
a smile to my face.
We can be the new generation of parents. Not the helicopter, or tiger, or whatever all the styles are now. We can be part of
the Possibility Parent movement. We can
realize that all people want the same thing,
the right to choose. Learning how to support prudent risk taking will get our children to college and out of the basement. •
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jackie Schwabe is CEO of Mindlight, LLC. She is a
Certified Caregiving Consultant and Certified
Caregiving Educator. She received her BA in
Management Computer Systems from the
University of Wisconsin -Whitewater and her MBA
in Technology Project Management from the
University of Phoenix. She has been active in the
area of healthcare integration, healthcare IT,
telemedicine, product development, and product
management for over 20 years. She has been a
cross-sector, cross-discipline leadership practitioner
her entire career. Jackie wakes up motivated to
help others. Her mission, to provide the tools,
opportunities, and connections people need to be
their best self. A mother of four children — one
with autism — she often says different is not less
and communication happens in more ways than
verbally. She co-founded MindLight, LLC as a way
to technologically help caregivers.
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