the post that my son might not appreciate someday

When you have a son and a daughter, particularly when the daughter is older than the son, it's a good idea to let her know proactively what the rules are for playing dress-up with her brother.

Yes, he's crying. One day he'll tell people that he was crying because his sister had the gall to put him in a dress.

On that day, you can decide for yourself whether to let him run with that story or to share the truth.

You see, the sobbing began when I started to take the dress off.

And he cried, "Nooooooooooooo, Mommy, I playing dress up with Jocy. Jocy say I priiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitty!"

Yes, this is a typical day in our house. And I love it.

Endless supply of laughter!

Behavior is communication {5 tips for responding}

An individual's behavior is part of his communication system, especially if a disability limits traditional forms of communication. Consider this excerpt from a children's chapter book I read aloud this week to my young daughter:

"I don't want to go back to school," she told Cory. "Miss Hall is mean and scary. I don't want to stand in the corner.

Cory shook his head.

"You got it all wrong, Andi," he said. "Miss Hall is nice...Sending you to the corner is the worst thing she'll ever do."

Cory's voice changed to a whisper. "Don't tell Miss Hall, but I like the corner. It's right next to the window. I can see a lot out there."

Andi's eyes opened wide at this news. "You like standing in the corner?

Cory nodded. "Sometimes I get tired of doing lessons. Then I act up, so I can go look out the window."

The teacher thought she was disciplining Cory by sending him to the corner; instead, she was giving him exactly what he wanted. By his misbehavior, he was saying, Please let me go stand in the corner and look out the window! Because the teacher didn't understand his behavioral communication, she didn't change the consequence to a less desirable one that may have actually deterred him. Meanwhile, for a different child - Andi - the idea of standing in a corner was enough to steer her clear of breaking the rules, which is a good reminder that we should consider each person as an individual not as a label or category.

But the teacher could have done even better than just making the consequence less desirable. She could have made the desired behavior easier for Cory as well. If he needed frequent breaks to refocus his attention, for example, she could have proactively prevented the misbehavior by targeting the behaviors/circumstances (also called antecedents) preceding and leading up to it.

What are the individuals in your ministry communicating by their behavior? These steps might help:

1. Identify the behavior.
2. List everything that happens just before the undesired behavior. After a few incidents, you'll probably find a common antecedent (such as the behavior occurs each time you're doing an activity that the person doesn't like or it happens shortly after you enter a certain room or it doesn't begin until about five minutes into storytime). This could help with the next step.
3. Consider what the individual might be communicating with that behavior (such as I'm bored or The lights are bothering me or I can only pay attention for five minutes and then I get distracted).
4. Figure out one thing you can change to respond to that behavioral communication (respective to the examples above, some might be use more multi-sensory teaching strategies, incorporating visual, auditory, and hands on aspects or use lamps instead of florescent lights/move to a room with different lighting or teach in multiple shorter segments of time rather than one long block).
5. Make the change for at least three weeks and see how if the individual's behavior changes. If so, continue. If not, start back at the beginning, and don't be discouraged. Even experts in behaviorism have to do a little trial and error to figure this stuff out.

Here's an example: One child with multiple disabilities at our church was spitting at his helpers and occasionally at other children and inanimate objects. This is a major behavioral issue because of sanitary concerns, which made it a high priority for us to address. Eventually we realized that he did it on Sundays when his mother passed him off to a helper in the hall instead of bringing him to the room (we suspect that he felt like we were taking him away from mom in the hallway, whereas he felt like she was giving him to us at the classroom) and when he only had male helpers (which made sense because his dad isn't around and he seems to trust women more than men). Now that we've established drop-off procedures and paired him with female volunteers, the problem is mostly resolved.

We could have just written off his behavior as bad or difficult to manage or too unsanitary. Instead, by treating it as communication, we were able to work with his mom to figure out what he was trying to tell us and adapt accordingly. And, as a result, this family is able to be engaged at our church. Praise God!

How about you? Do you have any examples like that one? Could you share them below to benefit all of us?

Or do you have any tough behavioral situations you're working through in your ministry? If so, share those too, and we can support one another in troubleshooting. Please - out of respect and love - remember to maintain confidentiality by not using names or using fake names and by not disclosing other information that could identify the individuals in question.

Image-bearers encountering Christ

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, 

how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace 

of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!

Romans 5:15 (NIV)

Grace and salvation overflows to the many, which includes those whose lives are touched by disability. In many books on special needs ministry, I see the focus on the truth that we were all created in the image of God. And that certainly is true, but it's incomplete.

That last remark might sound extreme, but let me explain. A friend of mine drew my attention to this news article last week, the story of  the bar mitzvah of a boy with multiple disabilities. From a disability advocacy perspective, it's encouraging, and it provides a model of a faith tradition welcoming those with special needs in another country.

The primary reason for Jewish children with special needs to be included in religious ceremonies, as stated in the article, was that they are made in the image of God, like each of us. And that is certainly true. But it is also true that they are each sinners in need of the Savior.

It may seem like I'm being picky here. After all, the passages Jews use to support the "image of God" reasoning includes some of the same verses we use, given that we share some scriptures. But as I've reviewed books about Christianity and disability, I have been surprised to see that many of those books stress only that these individuals are made in the image of God. Sin and salvation? Only mentioned in passing, if at all.

It would be wrong if I added the words "except people with disabilities" to verses about being made in the image of God. Likewise, it's wrong if we tack the same dismissive clause to the end of verses like Romans 3:23-24:

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 

and are justified by his grace as a gift, 

through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus

Have you ever heard someone say, "Oh, I love working with kids with special needs. They're just so cute, especially the ones with Down syndrome!" The problem with comments like those is that they can dismiss the truth that each of those kids is a kid first. The child has a disability; the disability does not have him. And I can vouch from experience that the five children with Down syndrome at our church are certainly precious ... but they are also mischievous and occasionally disobedient, just like any other children at our church.

Sometimes the true statement about people with special needs being made in the image of God is said in the same tone as "aren't they so cute?" It's almost said as if they have an exalted status, as if the image of God that they project is somehow more complete or less marred by sin than their non-disabled peers. My concern is that an overemphasis on "the image of God" could be motivating us to settle for accessibility without progressing to inclusion.

Yes, we need to ensure that individuals with special needs can enter churches and Sunday school classes. To be transparent about our past failures at my church, though, we used to do that well...but we didn't really aim to teach the kids with disabilities once they arrived. If someone walked by a class, they might have assumed we practiced real inclusion because kids with special needs were included in our typical classes. We included them in classes because it was easier than making a separate class and because, after all, they were created by God too; we just didn't try to figure out how to teach them in a meaningful way.

Did we think it was too hard? Yes, in part. Did we care more about appearing to be inclusive rather than actually being inclusive? Maybe a little of that. Did we feel like our aim was to make sure parents could go to church? A little of that too. Did we fall short because we weren't convinced that they needed to know Christ and be discipled as much as any other child? Yes, I think that was a big part of it although no one would have admitted that.

I began coordinating Access Ministry with my husband within a month of teaching a vacation Bible school class that included a little boy with Down syndrome. Over the course of the week, we kept him safe. I don't think we did a whole lot more than that, though, and his cognitive abilities were high enough for him to have learned a lot more than he did, even without significant modifications being made.

My point here isn't that we should stop talking about people with disabilities as being made in the image of God, just like you or me. My point is that we shouldn't stop there. As it says in the verse I began with, grace and salvation overflow to the many through Christ. The sin that has stained the image of God in each of us can only be made clean by Christ.

I would love for everyone to see people with disabilities as creations of our great God. And I would love for salvation and grace to overflow to every person - with or without special needs. I don't just want to recognize those I love as image bearers; I want them to be image bearers who encounter the God whose image they bear.

The YES

Several weeks ago, a guy I respect in disability ministry wrote a series of posts about an informal online survey he did with parents of kids with special needs. Michael Woods - who is also the dad of three boys with autism spectrum disorders - is skilled at fostering community, so he was in a good position to conduct that survey, yielding far more responses than I would have gotten if I attempted the same thing! Of the 136 who responded, 25% attended a church with a special needs ministry program, 20% attended a church without a formal or defined program, and 55% didn't attend at all. He commended the churches in that 20% group for welcoming families, even without a program, He also suggested in the next post that even if a church is finding ways to welcome people with special needs, it's still better to have a program than not to have one.

I respectfully disagree about that last opinion. (However, he raises good points, so I think it's a good idea to follow those links to see what he has to say!)

Before I get into why, though, let me share another post with you from another guy who I respect in disability ministry. What Dr. Grcevich wrote was a little different, though: a proposition that any church, even one who doesn't "do programs," can find a way to welcome families with special needs.

I'm going to chime in now with a couple thoughts. First, I think it may be healthier in some churches not to have a defined program. I've seen the definition of a program change the mindset of the church; sometimes the presence of a program makes the body of Christ in that church start thinking it's ________ program staff/volunteers' job to welcome those folks instead of it's on all of us to show love. Please don't get me wrong; it's not the program that causes the problem. It's the perception of the people. But it happens. Also, I've seen programs become a way of excluding people with special needs instead of including them. Once again, it's not the presence of the program that causes this division, but it happens.

Conversely, though, programs communicate something that a more organic model often doesn't. In the special needs world, lots of programs exist to coordinate health care and education and other aspects of life with a disability, so individuals with special needs (and, where applicable, their families and/or caregivers) may expect programs. Additionally, it defines a commitment and often communicates that commitment in a different way. For example, my husband and I found our current church through its website, and that site - like many church websites - has a place to click to find out about ministries offered there. If a special needs ministry is listed in that place or visibly integrated into pages for other ministries, that communicates something that a simple statement of welcome might not.

As for the churches who were somehow including children with special needs without having formal programs, maybe they're doing the simple church thing that was discussed in Dr. G's post. Maybe not. Maybe they're doing special needs ministry well without a program in place. Maybe they're not.

What I do know is that they are doing something right, whether or not they have a program. Those families showed up, and there was a place for their kid(s). In whatever way they did it, those churches said yes.

That's what special needs ministry is. It's not programs and policies and intake forms and respite nights and curriculum and modifications and all those trappings that support it. (Not to say, though, that those things aren't important. They are, but they only matter after the yes has been established.) As I've written previously in one of my all-time favorite posts, special needs ministry isn't just another program. Special needs ministry is, at its core, a willingness to say yes when that family calls or shows up and when that adult with a disability comes through your doors.

Most special needs ministry efforts are not elegant in the beginning. Actually, drop that last part: Most special needs ministry efforts are not elegant. (And maybe we should drop "most" as well?)

It's the yes. Yes, this is worth it. Yes, we want to share the love of Jesus with all people, regardless of disabilities and special needs. Yes, we care. Yes, we'll figure it out, even if it's a little scary and confusing.

The yes matters.

Monday round-up! {6/27/11}

No one commented at the end of last week's Monday round-up when I asked if you liked this sort of post or not, so if you have an opinion either way, let me know! I still haven't decided if this will be a regular thing or if I'll go back to writing a regular post for Mondays.

Do you look away from disability?: During both of my pregnancies, especially my second one during which I was in bed for a while, I camped out at BabyCenter. This is a thought-provoking article with even more interesting comments. There was also a related article in the NY Times this week.

This and this and this and this and this and this and this are all recent articles I came across about churches who are embracing people with special needs.

This dad of twin boys with autism does an excellent job describing autism in general and the joys and struggles of parents. (While he does describe his children as miracles, I don't know what his faith is.)

Focus on the Family posted this article from the Summer 2011 edition of their Thriving Family magazine about a mother's experience thinking that parents or kids with special needs were superhuman and then becoming one of those parents.

MassMutual graduated their first class of agents designated as Chartered Special Needs Consultants (ChSNC™). Read about it here.

Here's a press release about a study from Baylor indicating that church congregations are blind to mental illness.

And if you haven't seen this life-affirming commercial from Pampers, enjoy!