During a child's first five or six years, parents are virtually the only guides he has. When care and dedication are given to this role, the results show.
For a child with developmental delay—intellectual, emotional, or motor—education happens mainly through habit. Good habits matter in every person's life, but they become crucial for someone who cannot yet judge for himself what is right and proper from what is wrong or out of place.
Here are some practical suggestions for building habits that will help your child get along better with family and peers, at school and later on, when being accepted and liked becomes more important than ever.
A Structured Day
From the start, establish a regular daily routine. When a child knows that one thing follows another, he accepts it more readily and does it without fuss—getting up, washing, dressing, breakfast, washing hands before lunch, waiting for everyone to sit down before eating, folding his napkin. The sequence of daily activities must be followed strictly. A child with developmental delay is conservative and upset by changes in ways we might not expect.
Courtesy and Restraint
Teach him to greet people properly, to say "thank you" when he receives a gift or help, and "please" when he asks for something. Teach him to answer when spoken to, to express his desires, but also to accept when they cannot be met. (Above all, if you notice that giving in to constant pleading encourages more of the same, resist it.)
Breaking Annoying Habits
When he does something odd or unusual, don't laugh at it just because he's small and it seems cute. What looks like a harmless prank now will later become an unattractive trait. The same gesture from an adult will make him unbearable to some people.
Be careful not to let him develop hard-to-break habits: rocking back and forth, repeating certain hand movements, spinning an object over and over. These monotonous gestures may seem to satisfy him, but they become empty repetitions that don't truly gratify him. Once they take hold, it's exhausting to keep redirecting his attention or finding substitutes.
Gentle Manners
The people around your child influence him greatly. Because he cannot yet reason through what is right and wrong, he simply absorbs what he sees and hears. If your home is spoken in respectfully, calmly, with affection, he will do the same. If he hears rudeness, shouting, coarse language, don't be surprised if his own behavior becomes coarse and unacceptable.
Bad Habits
Father, mother, brothers, sisters, relatives, and friends become his models—ones he will imitate, often remarkably well. You'll find it much harder to break a bad habit than to prevent him from picking it up in the first place, no matter how much effort and patience it costs.
The following two pages are drawn from Adelaide Grisoni Colli's excellent book Educational Care for Children with Cerebral Palsy in Early Childhood (Cappelli, 1968).
At the Table
Affectionate love: These parents understand that children sometimes lack appetite. When a child isn't hungry, parents don't withdraw affection or lose their composure.
Duty-bound love: These parents think that because they have a duty to cook, the child has a duty to eat. By forcing him to eat with hostility, they'll make food hateful to him.
Suffocating love: These parents give food too much importance. The child may then refuse to eat out of spite. What should be a natural, pleasant act becomes a tool of power in his hands.
Illness
Affectionate love: These parents show the same calm affection, even if they are worried inside. They call the doctor if needed, but they also look at things objectively.
Duty-bound love: These parents blame the child for every ailment instead of accepting that illness can happen to anyone. In time, the child grows fearful of sickness and becomes anxious.
Suffocating love: These parents are too afraid of every minor complaint and pass their fear to the child. Instead, he should learn to accept not feeling well sometimes without becoming distressed.