Summer is coming, and with it, time off from school and maybe time off from work. What are you going to do with that time? If you are a parent, and especially if you are the parent of a child with a disability, I hope you will take them out into the world and do things. Getting out does not necessarily mean going across the world. It can mean going to go the local park or the county fair or a local historical site or the zoo or a museum or even the beach. The bottom line is that I hope you are making plans to take your child out to experience the world.
This is a constant theme for me, and a pretty strongly held belief. That is, if you want to truly educate your child and want them to make connections to the things they learn in school, then they need to get out and see and do things, to touch things and make contact with them. Not only will you be helping them make those links between what they read or talk about in school, but you will be helping your child develop memories and links to you as a parent and to the family. You will also be helping to shape some of your child’s interests and helping them to develop that sense of curiosity and wonder that is critical to learning. Paraphrasing the author Antoine St. Exupery, who wrote both The Little Prince and Wind, Sand, and Stars, you don’t teach someone to build a boat by issuing directions on building the boat, but you teach them to build the boat by helping them to learn to love the sea so that they will want to learn how to build the boat to go out on the sea. In other words, help someone to develop a deep interest in something, and they will do what they can to find a way explore that interest.
In our family, with our son, we made a decision long ago to do whatever we could to expose him to as much of the world has we could. To let him not just read about something or see it on TV, but to try and see it in person and to touch it when he could. I know this helped him in school. Too many times over the years, teachers would tell us how wonderful it was that Ian could discuss, often in detail, places they were talking about in class or things he had seen or done. Those experiences helped to form his interests, and have helped to enhance his education. They have helped him be successful in school. Let’s be honest, there is a difference between reading about something and actually experiencing it for yourself.
So, help your child learn, help your child want to learn, and help your child’s education. Take them out into the world and let them experience things. It will also allow you and your family to build links and memories as well. It is worthwhile.
