I Am Free Now by Beril Tokcan

Author:Beril Tokcan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cosmo Publishing Company
Published: 2022-06-22T12:41:39+00:00

4. BECOMING INDEPENDENT

Emre: I am different.

Teacher Bahar: You are not the only one who is different. Everyone in our class is different. Some have black hair, some are blonde. Some wear glasses, some do not. Over time, we’ll all get used to each other’s differences.

5 years old

Being Successful

Success and affirmation are essential to a child’s development and self-esteem. In one of her lectures during the training, Anat stressed what this means especially for children like Emre: “The child with special needs requires lots and lots of small successes for her brain to wake up and figure out unique solutions to her condition. If asked to do what is way beyond her present capabilities, her brain can’t figure it out. She will actually be stopped from learning that skill, or the process will be much slower.”

A guest lecturer at the training, Rick Hanson, reminded us that being successful is a basic condition of learning, and that negative experiences are recorded deeper in the brain, making them more intractable. His book, Hardwiring Happiness, explains that painful or negative experiences are recorded and remembered much more easily by the brain than good experiences. This emphasized to me how

important it was for Emre to feel “successful” in the process of acquiring new skills. It was possible to replace negative experiences with positive, but it is difficult and time consuming.

In order to help him feel “success,” I had to change both my language and attitude. When he was two-and-a-half, I noted the words I used for a day as “positive” and “negative” to better understand messages I was sending in my interactions with him. I was embarrassed by the difference in how many times I used positive words and praised what he did and how many more times I told him he made a “mistake” or that he could change what he did. The striking experiment forced me to alter my perspective, language and tone.

It was essential that Emre create his own solutions, where he would try to meet his intentions with action. I let him try this at every opportunity, providing him with environments suitable for his skill level, where he could feel motivated and move on his own. His experiences were enriched when I changed my perspective to let him create his own solutions instead of helping him or encouraging him to “do” as soon as possible. If a toy slipped out of his hand, I let him pick it up. While allowing him to do this, I had to be careful so that it wasn’t too far away and wasn’t too difficult an action so that he would become frustrated. If he needed my help, I also had to be careful when and how I helped him. If it was too hard, instead of motivating him to do it by saying, “You can do it,” I said, “You’re right, it’s hard, let’s try it differently, and see if it will get easier.” Sometimes I brought a toy he could not reach a little closer and made him reach out.

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