presuming competence

When Anne Sullivan first worked with Helen Keller, she approached her with the presumption that she was competent, that Helen’s problem emanated from her not having an effective means of communication.   Even before Anne began to work with Helen, there was evidence of her desire to communicate—she used pantomime to show her interest in making ice cream or wanting toast with butter.  But it was Anne’s introduction of spelling and words that proved liberating for Helen.  

The principle of “presuming competence,” is simply to act as Anne Sullivan did.  Assume that a child has intellectual ability, provide opportunities to be exposed to learning, assume the child wants to learn and assert him or herself in the world. To not presume competence is to assume that some individuals cannot learn, develop, or participate in the world.  Presuming competence is nothing less than a Hippocratic oath for educators. It is a framework that says, approach each child as wanting to be fully included, wanting acceptance and appreciation, wanting to learn, wanting to be heard, wanting to contribute.

- Douglas Bilken, Begin by Presuming Competence

After the word "autism" the phrase "presume competence" has been reverberating through my brain in an infinite loop, partly because it's so talked about in the autism community. I love the quote above for so many reasons. First, because it treats people with autism (and any disability) as full-fledged human beings. Second, because it shifts the paradigm from the burden being placed on the child to prove that they are willing and able to learn and instead puts the burden on the adult to find pathways and supports to help the child to learn. Third, it shines a light on my own parenting and the ways in which I underestimate Elias. No longer.

I have lately been reading books to him that I didn't think he was ready for. He often doesn't pay attention in the way that *I* associate with paying attention (which means, being quiet and still, neither state being conducive to 4-year olds), but that doesn't mean that he isn't listening. A few nights ago, I was praying for him before bed and laid my hand on his little body as I prayed. He wiggled around under my hand but was quiet. I haven't been doing this out loud because it didn't seem like he'd care or understand. But, after I was done, he said "Amen."

For a more salient example of this: when Caroline was 2 years old, we took away her much beloved pacifier. It was nightmarish. We decided to get her off of it cold turkey after her dentist said that she saw the effects on her bite correlated to how hard she was sucking on it. Unbeknownst to me, she was getting a cold, so she really wanted it to clear her nose. I kept telling her "binky went bye-bye." I was so tempted to give it back to her, but had already taken it away and I didn't want to give it back to her for fear that she'd think that crying and whining for it was what will bring it back. Plus, after going through 2 days of crying I didn't want to "waste" all of that drama by giving it back to her [side note: we did the same thing with Ben around 18-20 months old and it took him 2 days to get over it]. It took a full 2 weeks to get her to finally accept it was gone. 

Meanwhile, we'd go on a play date and I'd complain about it to my friends about how it was brutal it was to get her off of it and advising them to wean their children off of it sooner than later. Stupidly, I didn't think that Caroline understood/cared what I was saying until one day she said to me "Binky went bye-bye. YOU took it away!!"

Whoops.

Presume competence y'all. In any child, no matter how old or what you think their ability level is. That doesn't mean you teach ancient Greek to your 3 year old, but it does mean that you understand that THEY understand what's going on around them.