How to address children's questions about people with disabilties

I've taught handicapped awareness classes for a number of years in elementary schools with kids as young as 5 or 6 years old. I've found that even one hour spent with a class of children results in a huge improvement in their perception of people with disabilities.

I did a few classes in a team with a young lady who was an amputee and had a prosthetic arm. She would literally remove her arm during her presentation. The children were more curious than afraid and asked very insightful questions. Most asked if another arm would grow, or if she was in any pain, or how she managed to play. They were very loving and concerned about the people with disabilites and full of questions!

What I learned from this is that children's initial reaction to disability seems to fall into one of three categories:

1. Fear: what if it happened to me?
2. Empathy: is the person in pain? can the person play?
3. Curiosity: how does the person do things? will it get better? how did it happen? etc.


Here are a few tips I have learned that parents and adults may want to use with kids:

Answer children's questions about people with disabilities. Don't ignore, change the subject, or punish the child for being curious or asking questions. This can be very damaging since it sends a message of fear to the child about the whole subject.

Let kids know that the way a person looks is never an acceptable reason for teasing or rejecting them. If you hear or see your child behave this way, address the behavior, but don't overreact.

Remember what you do is as important as what you say.

Teach your child how to act around people with disabilities by providing opportunities for them to interact with people who have disabilities.

If your child accidentally runs into a person in a wheelchair or a blind person in the food store, use it as a learning experience instead of ignoring it or yelling at the child. All children need to be taught how to handle themselves around these situations. If the child asks you what's wrong with the person, it is okay to simply state He/she is blind or uses a wheelchair and add would you like to say hello. This encourages the child to see past the disability. Please don't panic when (not if) one of your kids does one of these things, but if your child is old enough to be taught how to handle himself better, use it as a teaching moment.