Helping Kids Self-Advocate
I recently worked Shayna, a teen with significant social anxiety, who we discovered was also autistic.
Learning she was autistic was incredibly helpful for her and her family. Shayna said she felt relieved to know how to describe her experiences!
Excited by this, we told her the next step would be sharing this information with her school so they could give her the support she needed.
Suddenly, Shayna froze up. Wide-eyed, she whimpered,
“I don’t want to have to tell them!“
Shayna was terrified to ask for (or receive) help, which was making her challenges at school even more challenging.
How do we help kids like Shayna feel confident asking for what they need?
Helping Kids Ask for Help
When a person’s brain is wired differently, the world is not always built for them. This mismatch can make school, work, and even socializing feel impossible.
However, when young people learn to ask for what their brains need, it helps change the environment to match how their brains work best.
This is called self-advocacy.
Of course, self-advocating is easier said than done. In working with youth, I’ve found there are actually 3 key pieces to getting their needs met:
- Understanding what they need
- Sharing their needs with others
- Using their resources to get their needs met
Here’s how I’ve helped kids with each of these 3 pieces in my own practice.
1. Understanding What I Need
Many kids don’t like talking about what’s hard. For this reason, I’ve found it most helpful to focus on noticing what works.
This may come from environments where the child thrives, or things they do naturally that work well for them.
For example:
“I was thinking about how much you love karate. I wonder what it is about that class that works for you?”
“I notice that you often do your homework standing at the counter. It seems like moving may help you focus.”
Next, we can make a “what works wish list,” like this:
2. Sharing My Needs with Others
Once we make our list of what works, it’s time to figure out how to share it with teachers, counselors, coaches, and others.
First, I’ve found it helpful to talk to the child about what might be tricky about sharing their needs. These answers tend land in one of these categories:
- Worries about the adult’s response
- Difficulty knowing what to say
- Difficulty finding the right time
- Not wanting to stand out
To help, here are some of the solutions we’ve come up with:
Bringing the list to a school meeting and sharing their words, even if they can’t use their voice just yet.
Sharing the “wish list” with a counselor or other team “leader” so they can share it with the rest of the school team.
Practicing with one trusted adult first (e.g. a favorite teacher) to experience their supportive reaction.
Helping the child schedule a 1-1 meeting with the adult to share in confidence.
Writing an email together that the child can send to adults on their team.
For Shayna, she chose to allow her mother to share her “wish list” at a school meeting. There, she got to watch as adults responded with warmth and support to her words.
3. Using My Resources
Now that the child has shared their needs, the next step is to support them in actually using the resources and accommodations available to them.
Learning to self-advocate is like learning any other skill. Many young people need a little support or scaffolding to help build this new ability and activate it in real time.
Again, there are a few things that can get in the way of a child putting their supports to use:
- Forgetting to ask
- Not know how to ask
- Being embarrassed to ask
To help, here are some of the solutions that have helped the children I work with:
1. Asking teachers to give the child a secret sign to remind them to use their resource.
“I’ll tap your desk during independent work time to remind you to get your headphones.”
2. Providing scripts for young people to help them ask for what they need.
“When you feel squirmy, you can tell me ‘I have a lot of energy today. Can I use the wobble stool?'”.
3. Suggesting supports as experiments so they can experience what it’s like to have the accommodation in place without pressure.
“Let’s try using audiobooks for 1 week, and you can let me know if it’s helpful or not.”
A New Tool for Building Self-Advocacy
Learning to self-advocate is a process. If you’re looking for a step-by-step guide to develop these skills in your child, Our Brains is a new book for parents that was created to help!
Our Brains is a collaborative, workbook-style book for kids and their adults to complete together.
The book begins by celebrating neurodiversity and emphasizing the importance of our differences:
Through interactive activities, kids then identify their strengths and challenges, to give them a vocabulary for describing their experience in the world:
The book offers an opportunity to explain the child’s specific diagnosis, with integrated videos to help engage them in the conversation:
Finally, kids and adults identify what they need to help their brains thrive!
If a tool like this could help your child become a strong self-advocate, click below to learn more and preorder your copy!
