The Self-Help Guide for Special Kids and Their Parents by Joan Matthews EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: Joan Matthews
- Language: English
- Genre: Parenting Hyperactive Children & Children with Disabilities, Parenting Hyperactive Children & Children with Disabilities
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Saying Hello
Problem
When one normal person comes up to another normal person and
says ‘Hello,’ the first NP expects the second NP to make eye contact,
smile, feel good that someone is talking to him, then say hello back.
But a special person can’t do all that. When an NP comes up to an
SP and says ‘Hello,’ the SP freezes, looks down out of sheer terror,
feels fear in his entire body, and forgets how to talk. He just wishes
the NP would go away.
Usually, the NP will repeat himself. ‘Hello,’ he’ll say, more loudly
this time. But the special person has forgotten how to speak.
Sometimes the SP’s mother will hit him on the back and command,
‘Say Hello.’ The special person, out of fear, may echo ‘Hello’ quickly
but then become frozen again. Often, though, the mother’s message
gets scrambled, and the SP may hear, ‘Say yellow’ or ‘Sail low,’ or
something that makes no sense.
A very thoughtless NP may shout ‘HELLO!’ a third time, which
hurts the special person’s ears (see Chapter 2: Noise Sensitivity).
Now the SP might shout ‘Hello’ back, out of fear that the other
person will say a fourth hello even louder. Other times, the person
who said ‘Hello’ gives up and goes away.
Solution
The special person needs to practice saying hello over and over with
a mom or a sister or a nice aunt. He needs to videotape himself saying
hello, so it becomes a familiar situation, and he can do it without
having to think. It might help if you let him watch excerpts from
movies in which people are greeting each other appropriately,
though you run the risk of having him fixate on a particular scene
THE SELF-HELP GUIDE FOR SPECIAL KIDS AND THEIR PARENTS
and then repeating it endlessly. (See Chapter 24: Having an Urge to
Quote.) You might want to write up short skits in which people are
saying hello in various ways, then have the SP try out all the parts.
After he has practiced hello in this formal fashion, you may want to
start saying hello to him at random during the day, so he gets used to
a spontaneous need to respond. Your familiar voice is not the same as
a stranger’s coming out of the blue, but if you throw out a dozen
hellos every day, eventually the terror of having to greet someone
may lessen.
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