A-Z Disability Challenge | B : Building Trust

Howdy!

I created this challenge to talk about disability topics and today’s post will discus about building trust with other people. So, this piece will contain some personal advice and experiences, but it’s more directed to the families of disabled kids and young adults.

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Trust is a big thing.

You learn it from a very young age, I think you don’t necessarily realize it until you begin to look back and it does make sense, it all goes together. Here’s an example, whenever a toddler is about to do something he’s not suppose to, you tell him “no” and try to explain that he’ll get hurt. You can’t expect your child to leave it alone, that’s a rarity even in itself, so you’ll most likely see the kid do it anyways and start wailing because it got a bump on the head. First off, kids have to learn things on their own. You hope they’ll get the message and learn to trust you the next time you say something like that, but even you know better not to trust a young child either. So, it goes back and forth quite a bit…

As somebody with a disability, I rely on people to help me with things. I don’t like to, because I always feel like I can figure it out on my own, but there are things that I cannot do by myself so I need help with them. When you have to invite a third party, it can always be a hit or miss. I learned this while I was in school. Whenever my aides were out for a period of time, I had many, many substitutes that would have to be with me throughout the day. I would have to teach them what I needed for each class and what they could do to pass the time. They were kind of dragged from one place to another; not to mention to give your trust on a person you’ve just met once or only had a few times, circumstances would worry me sometimes because I didn’t know what this person would do.

Honestly, I tend to give people the benefit of a doubt. It’s one of the bad things about going with the flow. You don’t want to second guess people right away, so you go all in and give your trust away like it’s pieces of candy. However, I’ve learned over the years to listen to my body about certain things: your gut will tell you when something’s up and mine would flare up a lot while I was in school. I would break down in the middle of classes and feel completely awful, afterwards I would be switched out of that class and I’d calm down and be myself again. Unfortunately, I haven’t had this happen whenever I’m around people, just whenever I’m in a different place physically. I guess that’s better than anything though, right?

For families of disabled kids though, everything is heightened. They’re not there with their child. They have to hope that whoever’s watching over their kid is doing what that person would do for their own children. If something has happened that is a little weird, things can escalate really fast and as someone who has had been in this kind of situation, it feels horrible. You don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but if something is off about how you’re being treated whether it’s physically or emotionally, it is best to speak up about it. You don’t deserve to live in fear of what’s going to happen once the dominoes collapse. They have to give up a lot of their trust to the people their child is around on any given day, and that includes their friends, and that alone can cause a lot of anxiety, but you do continue to take chances because you do want your children to be treated like everybody else, if they don’t, how is your child suppose to live in the real world?

How are you with trusting others around you? And families, what kept you going when things weren’t ideal with your child’s aide or surroundings? Do you have any advice you could to other parents out there?