Having a Daughter With a Disability: Is it Different For Girls?

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Confronting the World of School and Work

Three federal laws require the provision of sex equitable education to students with disabilities. These laws are Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. On the basis of these laws, your daughter cannot be denied special education, related services, or vocational education. (You can obtain more information about these laws by contacting NICHCY.)

Our educational system can represent one of the greatest vehicles for self-empowerment that your daughter has at her disposal, because, through schooling, she can equip herself with the knowledge and skills needed to achieve independence and self-sufficiency. As has been discussed, however, inequities can occur in the provision of services, due to expectations regarding the roles of males and females in society in general and, more specifically, the capabilities of a female with a disability. Therefore, parents must be committed to securing the best, most appropriate education for their daughter, and vigilant that she does not receive guidance or instruction that unnecessarily limits her development along sex-biased and stereotyped lines.

Here are some suggestions for working within the educational system to ensure that your daughter receives an education that develops her intellectual, social, and physical capabilities without limiting her future.

• Be involved. Talk to your child's teachers and other school personnel. Make the effort to be present at all meetings to discuss IEPs developed for your daughter, and share any special concerns, ambitions, or disagreements that you have. Remember, you are experts, too; you know a great deal about your child, and are an important member of the team. Let them know that you expect her to achieve, and work with the school, especially her counselors and teachers, to make sure she is in programs that foster this.
  
  
• Be aware. Find out what your daughter is learning in class and how you can support this learning at home.
  
  
• Be supportive. Let your daughter be involved in extracurricular activities. Social contact with peers is a vital part of growing up and learning to be independent.
  
  
• Be knowledgeable. Know your rights and the opportunities available in the school and county. Work with the school system to assure that an appropriate education and- services are being provided for your daughter, taking into consideration both her needs and her ambitions. For example, if she plans to go to college, make sure she takes the required courses for entrance; if she needs job training, make sure vocational training is in her IEP. Counselors are a good resource and are available for consultation regarding tests, applications, and services after high school.
  
  
• Be an advocate. If you detect a problem in the provision of services, confront it. "It's amazing how people respond to you when you are prepared, committed to listening, not attacking them, and determined to get what you feel your child needs" (Weiner, 1986, p. 109). Talk with other parents of children with disabilities. By combining your forces, when and where necessary, you can effect change in your school system and community regarding sexual stereotyping and awareness.
  
  

As your child matures, the world of work becomes an increasing concern. Regardless of the nature of your daughter's disability, actively pursue employment as a goal for her. Do not think this is unreasonable. Gay Tompkins, a teacher in Arlington County, Virginia, who teaches children with disabilities ranging from mild to quite severe, reports that, in her program, "We expect every child, no matter how disabled, to have a job someday." This is true in classrooms across the nation. For some, attaining this goal may require support and appropriate accommodation, am approach known as partial participation, partial assistance. For all, however, securing the goal of employment requires the expectation and involvement of significant caregivers. "Work makes a vast qualitative difference in the lives of disabled Americans," report Harris and Associates (1987, p. 2). "Comparisons between working and nonworking disabled people show that those who work are more satisfied with life, much less likely to consider themselves disabled, and much less likely to say that their disability has prevented them from reaching their full abilities as a person" (Harris and Associates, 1987, p. 2).

In determining a career path for your daughter to follow, you may need to set aside certain work or status expectations you have for your daughter and examine the ideas you hold about what is acceptable work. A statement such as "I'm not going to let her go into social work. She's going to study computers, that's where the future is!" reveals what parents want for their child, and denies what the child may want for herself. Similarly, proclamations such as "Fold laundry? Not my child! She'll stay at home with us first!" reflect the belief that certain types of work are unacceptable. Before parents can summarily reject a type of work as inappropriate for their child, a realistic assessment of the child's strengths and weaknesses must be made. Moreover, each child is an individual with her own personality, preferences, and desires. What she can do and what she wants to do should be the primary considerations for determining what she will do, not whether the parents feel a certain type of employment measures up to their expectations or is "acceptable" for their child.

Career planning is typically developed in conjunction with the school system. Whether your daughter is placed in a vocational training program or pursues academic training is a decision reached through discussion with teachers, counselors, therapists, and you, the parent. Don't allow your daughter to have false limits set for her because she is a female or because she has a disability. Don't you set false limits, either. As Mitchell (1982) states, "The biggest career development problem for children with disabilities is the low expectation society (school, government, family) has for adults with disabilities" (p. 57).

Receiving training, vocational or academic, is essential if your daughter is going to achieve any measure of independence and self-sufficiency. Parents should be deeply involved in the process of planning what training their daughter will receive. Here are some suggestions for confronting the complexities of career development.

• Know what type of career training your school system is planning to give your daughter. Go to all meetings where this is discussed. Find out whether their plan has taken into account what her interests and potential are. If not, insist that an assessment of her interests and aptitudes be made.
  
  
• Don't let doors be closed to your daughter. Protect her, when appropriate, from the "norms" of the educational system, which, for her, may be a trap. For example, Claire knew that because of her daughter's learning disability she did not do well on tests and that it would be difficult for her to score well on the SATs even though there are provisions for time extensions for people with disabilities. Thus, she did not allow her daughter to take these exams, recognizing that to do so might close college doors to her and have an adverse effect on her self-esteem. Believing that her daughter could succeed in college, she enrolled her daughter in a junior college that did not require SAT scores for admission, thereby letting Sue prove that she could do the academic work despite her disability. Now, Sue is entering her senior year at a major university and will graduate with a degree in human ecology.
  
  
• Know what types of vocational and academic training are available and your daughter's rights to receive this training. (Contact NICHCY for more information.)
  
  
• Teach your daughter to be an advocate for herself. In order to be able to do this, the young woman must be self-aware, confident, and know how to set limits. This must be worked on in the home and at school. If possible, let her attend seminars, workshops, and classes where she can learn how to present herself to prospective employers. She also needs to know the fundamentals of effective communication. She should be able to communicate her capabilities, disabilities, and what types of accommodations her disability requires. Mary Beth, who is 20, has a learning disability. She learned during her first year in a junior college to be candid with teachers, counselors, and friends regarding her disability. She is now transferring that skill to job interviews. She tries to be clear about what she does well, what she cannot do, and what she can do with a little extra time.
  
  
• Discuss with school professionals how many males and females are in various vocational programs and discuss the variety of options available to your daughter and how she might gain access to the programs. Don't be put off by comments such as "most of our girls go into..." or "...is a good job for a girl." Ask about job training opportunities and job placement and ask if the school has information on its graduates, in term of employment, wages, and benefits. Do this early in her high school program.
  
  
• What does your daughter want? Defend her right to pursue her own goals! This may mean that you, too, must go against your own wishes, as Suzanne, the mother of a 24 year old daughter with autism, had to do. Suzanne wanted her daughter, Valerie, to enter a computer training program. Although Valerie was tested as able to do the necessary computer work, she was intent on having a job folding laundry. After much discussion, Suzanne accepted Valerie's decision. This is the essence of allowing one's child to be self-determining. Suzanne realized that there was a good probability that once she has gained confidence in her ability to work, she might want to enter a new field.
  
  
• Don't let another person's ideas of what is "realistic" for your daughter be your ideas. As Mitchell (1982) says, "Telling any minority group to be realistic is telling them to buy the prejudices of our society" (p, 69). There are quite a few women with disabilities who ignored the advice of guidance counselors to be "realistic and adjust" to their handicap and who have gone on to become successful scientists, lawyers, and social activists. Phyllis Rubenfeld is one such individual. Told by the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation that they would not sponsor her training in social work because her physical disability did not allow her to jump, she pressed for her rights to pursue her own career preference and won. Today she has a doctorate in education (Weiner, 1986).
  
  
• Bring your daughter in contact with other women with disabilities who can serve as role models. This may have to be through the media of print or video, if you cannot provide in-person meetings. (Some resources for this type of information are listed at the end of this NEWS DIGEST.)
  
  

There have been many changes in recent years that are forcing society to reevaluate the way it views the work potential of people with disabilities. For example, rather than seeing the person as unemployable because he or she has a mobility impairment and uses a wheelchair, society has become aware that the deficit, in fact, exists in the architecture of buildings which does not permit the person to enter. Federal law, including the recently passed Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, requires employers who receive federal funds to make "reasonable accommodations" for a person with a disability. New technologies, such as sound-activated computers, are enhancing the work possibilities for persons with all types of disabilities (President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped, 1986). individuals committed to improving the status and opportunities of persons with severe disabilities have developed possibilities for supported employment, which emphasizes a "place and train" approach, rather than the "train and place" sequence used in vocational programs (Gardner, Chapman, Donaldson, & Jacob-son, 1988). All these changes expand the horizon of job possibilities for your daughter, no matter the severity of her disability.

Summary

The seeds of future independence, self-sufficiency, and productive employment are planted at home with the messages you give, consciously or unconsciously, to your daughter from the time she is born. As she grows, encourage her to achieve whatever she is capable of achieving. Teach her to value her own ideas, desires, and preferences. Solicit her input. Give her responsibilities in the house and teach her how to execute them. Also let her know that she, too, belongs in the world that exists outside of your door: the social world where people talk to and care about one another, and the world of work, which people begin preparing for in a myriad of ways long before they are actually employed. Does she believe that the social and work worlds are waiting for her? Tell her that they are. Prepare her for these worlds and her own place in them by encouraging her to take risks and to make decisions for herself. Help her to develop skills that will permit her to function in the work world and the community. Be her advocate in school matters and in career planning, and teach her to be her own advocate. And show her that other women with disabilities of all sorts have achieved their own independence, emotional wellbeing, and economic self-sufficiency through aspiring to develop the capabilities they have and not letting others limit their own sense of possibility. There is no denying that your attitudes and your expectations today and along the way will powerfully influence her own attitudes and expectations and, ultimately, her achievements.