Raise Inclusive Kids Introduction

*Disclaimer*

I’m doing my best to capture what it looks like to raise inclusive kids. While my original draft deadline has come and gone, I’ve decided to start sharing pieces of my book here on the blog. You can also find full sections exclusively on my Ko-fi page that you can check out here.

So here we go, the first few pages.

Raising kids is wild. They are energized, creative, interested, loud, emotional, genuine, honest, rebellious, hilarious, exhausting, and I think we can learn a lot from them. My children, and all of my former students, have made me contemplate social norms, parenting and teaching techniques, and have encouraged me to rethink what learning looks like. Deep in the trenches of graduate school, learning all about child development while working as a para in a classroom, I could not stop talking about how people should be parenting. I really thought I knew it all, but what I learned working with children with and without disabilities and now raising two of my own children, is that my job is not only to keep them safe but also how to critically think, set healthy boundaries, have and use their voice, and teach them how to be inclusive kids.

            I now have 2 kids. I am writing the first draft of this book with a 3-year-old and 18-month-old and it was a big transition from having 9 autistic students in a classroom for a set amount of time a day to becoming a parent all the time. I have never been more tired in my life but raising these tiny, fresh humans is the most important thing I have ever done. They are your innocent little babies and you want no one to touch them ever and no pain to ever come to them; unfortunately, having them live in a bubble will not raise confident, empathetic members of our community. The world can be a scary place, filled with the unknown. But I strongly believe with all of my being that these strategies I learned working in education will only be beneficial for you and your family.

            Before having children, I fell into that category of the know-it-all parents. I was NEVER going to give them screen time or sugar or battery powered annoying, loud toys. I was ONLY going to give them homemade baby food, wooden toys, and any support they could possibly need. I was going to STOP saying “bad” words. As a teacher, it was simple to stop saying bad words for a certain amount of hours a day, all day every day, for me, it was not. My 3-year-old uses “bitch” as a term of endearment. It was one of those things I didn’t even realize I did until she started copying me. Whoops. We will talk more about how we approached this in my language chapter.

            What I want to say is that raising kids to think critically and understand what “fair” actually means, takes a different kind of parenting. It takes patience, but you can’t be patient all the time. It takes being a good role model, even when you are not. It means educating them in ways we were not, which means we are learning as we go. I have been working with children all of my life; babysitting my sister and neighborhood kids, running my high school cheer team's cheer clinic, volunteering during college to play sports with athletes with disabilities, being a gymnastics teacher for kids and then stepping into the education system in 2011. Spoiler alert, I have never left.

Read the rest of the introduction on Ko-Fi

Comment below with any thoughts, edits, or experiences you want to share.

Inclusion starts with you and I just want to help.

Kayla Co.