Vocational Training for Children with Different Needs – How & When to Start?

It was a good eyewash to attend yesterday’s webinar organized by Nayi Disha and presented by Dr. Nina Vaidya, a very apt person for the job! Dr. Vaidya is a pediatrician from Navsari(Gujarat) and mom of a special 27 yrs daughter, Palak who she has successfully trained to work in a clinical environment !!!

Of course, it is a difficult journey for a parent to accept his/her child in the first few years after the diagnosis. However, the real battle begins on how we approach this question of at least partially mainstreaming the child with society through various means including meaningful vocational activity. Every parent would unanimously agree on the benefits of vocational training during the teenage years. However, Dr. Vaidya pointed out that pre-vocational skills are an important area that a lot of special parents fall short of.

Dr. Vaidya shared a comprehensive checklist of pre-vocational skills that every special parent has to pay attention to. It includes various aspects of how independent our child is to face the uncertain and maneuver through the dynamic world at large. Some of the key points are –

– Child’s understanding of private vs public and acceptable vs un-acceptable behavioral norms in society at large

– Ability to comprehend time, modes of measurements and directions, maps & traffic signals.

– Understand the importance of money, the safety of money, and some sense of daily requirements in terms of expenses.

– Appropriate communication skills to handle situations in the workplace and in social circles.

– How to seek help at the time of crisis and to some extent develop an understanding of situations that jeopardize personal safety

– Learn to adapt own behavior to the requirements at the workplace and also some sense of flexibility and prioritizing in a given environment.

Dr. Vaidya had given one example of her daughter, Palak when she started to work at her clinic between 9 am to 1 pm. Generally, special children tend to be very methodic and tend to be bound to their routines meticulously. As Palak was working as an assistant at the front desk and cash collections, she would leave exactly at 1 pm regardless of the patients waiting at the clinic. Later on, Dr. Vaidya had to train her for a few weeks for her to understand and develop flexibility. This is a very simple example but gives a sense of how every smaller aspect needs our attention and patience to work through.

For developing the required sense, vision, and resolve she posed a few questions that we as special parents need to find our own answers to and accordingly make a sustainable financial plan.

– Why do we want to impart vocational training to our children?

– What portion of his/her expected expenses the child could earn on his/her own?

– How do we plan to address the shortfall in the expense. In other words, do we have a financial plan in place? In a way, it is a better question to grapple with instead of worrying about “what happens after us?”

For a special parent, all this seems rather daunting. Obviously, there are a lot of merits to training our kids vocationally whether keeping them involved meaningfully or improving their self-esteem & confidence. But the point is it’s a very gradual process; so we have to commit to it from the get-go. Obviously, the first 8- 10 years would be spent mainly to get the child settled in age and IQ-appropriate educational setup. However as Stephen Covey, the famous author of “7 Habits of Highly Successful People” suggests, one needs to begin with the end in mind. So it would be ideal if parents could devote themselves to developing pre-vocational skills in children as early as 9-10 years of age. We have to involve our kids in various day-to-day activities, give them a lot of exposure to various situations, and slowly but surely nurture them to become responsible individuals regardless of the types of job skills they could delve into.

Finally, a lot of parents fret about choosing the right vocation. Children with developmental disabilities tend to do well with manual and repetitive tasks which require hands-on activities. There could be many potential vocations that would serve well whether it is in hotels, the food industry, the housekeeping/cleaning industry, and so on.

Personally, I have visited a factory in the Pune area where the owner, Mr. Subhash Chuttar has trained more than 50 special individuals to work in the factory as machine operators and they are working full time making automobile parts for MNC companies like Bosch and that too with zero rejection (Zero PPM). Unbelievable, right!!! One of the very well-known special educators in Pune, Mrs. Sunita Lele once pointed out to me that special parents often talk about their right to have work opportunities for special children; but is it NOT our responsibility to make our kids more employable first. We were talking about Lemon Tree hotel in Mumbai employing special adults for housekeeping work.

Along the same line, Dr. Vaidya suggested that it is ok to keep searching for the vocation our child would enjoy and be interested in. But we should always try to balance out availability and safety in addition to more practical aspects such as remuneration, distance, and working hours. She added, “It’s even more important to create a correct mindset and attitude of children so that they become employable and productive citizens of tomorrow no matter how minuscule their contributions seem!!!”

Watch the complete Webinar with Dr. Nina Vaidya: Vocational training for children with special needs here-  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD5dqd9GH8Y&list=PLAh0vBGvXygRp3O8BWpNRFu-mHky1y60B&index=6

——— I would love to hear your comments and suggestions. Please contact on 8308879900 / shlok.ability@gmail.com

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