Creating A Safe Place - Understanding Special Needs Children (2019)
HFG foster parents, Mark Lim and Sue Lim held a special training session for HFG foster parents last Saturday in Agape Baptist Church. Mark and Sue are trainers for special needs and have a heart for children with special needs. It was such a blessing! Joyce Too Yip and her husband, Teh Hsin Too are foster parents who attended and were greatly blessed. You can read Joyce's account below:
<We can see her pain now!>
My husband and I have been struggling with parenting one of our foster child who was diagnosed with Global Development Delay. Although she is 13, she is unable to do basic things confidently such as daily brushing of her teeth, getting the correct change when buying food, reading time and distinguishing between AM and PM. She also has trouble managing her emotions. Her occasional outbursts which involve crying, screaming and shouting on top of her lungs at home, in school or at public places has demoralised her and affected her ability to make friends.
Fostering such a child is not easy and you can imagine how thankful we are that Home for Good Singapore organised this seminar entitled "Creating a Safe Space - Understanding Children with Special Needs” for foster parents. It was conducted by Mark and Sue Lim, both are counsellors and trainers with more than 20 years of experience. They are also foster parents from the Home for Good Singapore network.
They opened our eyes to see the world through the lens of our foster child. A particular segment that made a huge impact on me was when Mark played a simulated video of an outing to a supermarket through the eyes of a child with sensory disorders. Images are blurry and sounds are amplified to unbearable levels. It was really uncomfortable for us to endure those few minutes. It struck us that this is the daily reality for many children with these disorders. It was an AHA moment for us - No wonder our foster child reacts aggressively at times!
Mark and Sue also shared very practical management strategies when children behave in a disruptive way. It changed my perception that these children are not trying to be 'naughty' but are simply unable to cope with the information presented to them to produce socially acceptable responses. Their brains are wired differently. With the right support, some of them can learn to improve. We were taught to give simple instructions with short sentences and preparing visual checklist which is easier to follow. Verbal instructions should come from one of us at a time, never from both at the same time. We realised our instructions contained far too many words and were often too complex.
2 days after the seminar, when I was driving home in the evening, my foster child called me on the phone. She asked for permission to watch TV. She knew it was not allowed on school nights but when I said no, she immediately started crying and sobbing uncontrollably. Usually, I would think she is being a brat and scold her for whining. But this time, I decided to try something I learned from the seminar - I asked her to do deep breathing with me together. After she calmed down enough to talk, I discovered she had a bad day in school when some of her friends rejected her. She was simply trying to use TV to ease her pain. As I showed her empathy, she was able to regulate her frustration much better.
We are so glad to have invested time in attending this seminar. We came away better equipped to parent our foster child more effectively and more lovingly.
********
There are special needs children who need fostering too. If you are open to fostering these or any other types of children, please do come to our intro teas.
