Questions for Interviewing Parents

of Children with Disabilities

1. Introduce yourself.

2. How did you learn that _______ has a disability? (Who was present? When did this happen?) If you were giving advice to professionals who need to explain to parents that their child has a special need, what would that advice be?

3. What have been the positive aspects of having a child in the family with a disability?

4. What have been the problems or challenges you’ve experienced having a child with a disability?

5. How did your other children react to learning their brother/sister had a disability? What impact has ______ had on them? (if appropriate)

6. What kinds of supports have been most helpful to you? (family members, parent groups, neighbors, other?)

7. What have been your experiences in working with school personnel? What have they done that has been most helpful? What have they done that was least helpful or was even harmful?

8. If I were to be ________’s teacher next year, what advice would you want to give me so that he/she had an optimum learning experience?

9. What would you want me to do/not do in terms of my interactions with you if I were ________’s teacher?

10. I am just learning about students with disabilities and how to work effectively with them in my classroom. What other information would you like me–and my classmates–to know about working with children with special needs?

1) “Correlation doesn’t equal causality.” This is also rendered as “correlation does not equal causation”: Just because one thing (a child develops a lot of gastrointestinal and behavior problems) happens shortly along with or after another (a child receives a vaccine) does not mean that the one thing (the vaccine) caused the other (the child developing said issues and “becoming” autistic.) The two things may indeed be connected, but one needs to look at more variables.

2) “Praise the power of N.” I took from this that one ought to beware of anecdotal accounts to provide “evidence” for a theory. If one child has shown some remarkable improvement from some treatment (as an example, taking certain herbal remedies), this means that that treatment has benefited one child, and the treatment has to be tried on a larger group of children before determining its efficacy.

3) “Sampling ain’t simple.” Look into how the “sample”—the control group in an experiment—-has been composed: How have the test subjects been found? What if it is found out that (for instance) some parents who have entered their children in an research study (regarding a certain biomedical treatment such as chelation, for instance), are also parties in an anti-vaccine lawsuit?

4) “Statistical interventions are marvels.” Take statistics in college—what you learn in such a class goes beyond answering a problem set! (I did not and I could have used that background.) (This is a vast over-simplification.)

5) “Development is nonlinear.” There is no fixed schedule or course of development that a child “has” to follow; a child might reach various developmental milestones out of the “usual” “order,” but the point is that a child attains them, at whatever age.

6) “Development is lifelong.” I think this one speaks for itself……

7) “Sensation is relative. What feels like a light and gentle tap to one person might seem very intrusive to another—high-pitched human voices seems to upset my son Charlie, but not me.

Eight) “Cognition is covert.” How much another person understands is hidden to us—my own son does not have a lot of language and it is not always readily evident to tell how much of what we have said to him is understood. I tend to “presume competence”—to presume as if he knows so much more than might be apparent to the eye. Thus, we are always careful not to speak of Charlie in his presence, and to proceed as if he understands everything said to him.

9) “Emotion is covert.” Just as he does not explain what he understands in the “usual” ways, so does my son not indicate his feelings (his being sad or angry, for instance) verbally, but that does not at all mean that he does not have those feelings. He expresses his emotions in other ways.

10) “Interpersonal interaction is a reciprocal function of attitudes, beliefs, and motivation.” Just because a child does not display the usual behaviors of social interaction (eye contact) does not mean that that child is not aware of what is going on around him; we need to watch out for our preconceptions of what “normal” social interactions are in regard to autistic persons, and seek to interact with them on their own terms, and be wary of our predetermined beliefs.

Again, these are my over-simplified versions of Dr. Gernsbacher’s fine list and corrections are more than welcomed.

*wince*

I think I’m an elitist. My apologies.

Charles B, thanks for the response and glad to read your blog!

bethduckie, hope others join in with any “translating”…. I really value Dr. Gernsbacher’s work and thought it best to present the list “as is.”

It was comprehensible IMO but it wont take long for people to say it in more friendly terms.