How to Help Your Child with Special Needs Prepare for Independent Living
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.”
― Henry David Thoreau
If you’re a parent of an adult child with special needs, you might’ve already heard the words “I want to live in my own house.” When you’ve spent every day caring for your child with special needs, the thought of them moving out might cause some panic. How will they gain the life skills they need to live independently? What if they get lonely? What if they’re in trouble and I’m not there to help?
When you’ve been the one on guard around the clock, there’s barely a moment to teach your child with special needs the life skills they need for independent living. But it’s never too late to start.
Self Care Life Skills
As well as brushing teeth, combing hair, bathing, and getting dressed, your adult child will need to know how to go food shopping, do their laundry, and take the right medications at the right times.
Depending on their level of independence, they may thrive much more in a community that has a staff of qualified carers, nurses, tutors, and coordinators. But does that mean that you’d be sending your child to a group home that doesn’t allow for independence? Not always. Some adults with special needs can learn how to live on their own. Some adults with special needs may want to have the help of a nurse or caregiver at home. Alternatively, you have independent apartment communities that allow a happy medium.
If your child with special needs is looking to move into more of a group situation, check out this list of things to ask your point of contact at each group living community.
Getting a Job
Getting a job is a huge part of gaining a sense of self worth and regulation. Being part of a team and making money is a great way for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to gain independence and start building a life that they love. There are programs that exist to help adults with special needs to find a job. Also, some communities for adults with special needs will offer job placement.
Maintaining a job and being able to pay for your own clothes, entertainment, and groceries is a freedom often taken for granted in the world. While your adult child might not be able to cover all of their bills, their mental health and sense of independence can benefit hugely from having a job.
Having a job challenges your adult child to be responsible for their own life while working on communication skills, learning how to handle money, making friends inside and outside of the special needs community, and so much more.
If your child isn’t able to find employment, you can help them to find meaningful volunteer work that will help to develop valuable skills. Habitat for Humanity is a great place for this!
Handling Money
Learning how to handle money is an incredible tool for independence. Having a bank account will also help your child with special needs to take ownership of their own budget. It allows freedom of choice. For example, maybe one day they’re in the supermarket and they want to splurge on chocolate–everyone should be able to do this with their money!
There are a variety of ways to help your child with special needs to learn how to handle money and budget. You can give them a certain amount of money and take them to a supermarket, restaurant, clothing store, etc. This hands-on real life experience is invaluable. If you really want to kick it up a notch and/or they don’t already have a job, you could ask them to do chores to earn said money (double bonus!)
Another fun way of learning about money is to play games like Monopoly, PayDay or Life. You can even substitute the play money with real money (as long as you’re prepared to lose that amount due to savvy investing on your opponents part!) Another way to assist your adult child with handling their money is to use mathematical workbooks or workbooks that have been specifically designed for teaching adults with special needs how to handle their money.
Remembering to pay bills on time is a challenge for most of us. If you sign your child up for automatic bill pay, that takes a lot of the stress away and helps them maintain good credit. It’s also a good idea to set up identity theft protection just in case someone tries to make a play for their money.
Food
Going out food shopping together and teaching your adult child how to use the self checkout machines and how to bag their groceries will pay them dividends forever more.
Teaching any child how to hold and use knives for cutting up veggies and such may be scary, but it’s much scarier if you’re not around and they don’t know! Working on basic cooking skills such as cracking an egg will help your adult child on their way to finding independence. Also, teaching them how to cook their favorite meals and a few easy, healthy meals will help them thrive when they move into their own place. As well as this, helping them to pop together a couple of different sandwich options can help them for the times that they’re in a rush or don’t feel like making a full meal.
This could also be a great time to start up a weekly tradition of dinner at your house. Everyone needs company, so this serves at least two purposes. Another tradition could be to send them a weekly meal via Uber Eats or Postmates or by signing them up for a dinner meal kit.
Gardening
From learning about healthy eating to reducing stress, gardening has a ton of benefits. Plants like alfalfa are awesome starter plants because they can be grown on the window sill and they take very little ukeep. Alfalfa also offers loads of great nutrients and can be dropped on just about any sandwich.
If your child is lucky enough to have an outdoor garden space, teaching them how to tend to the garden can help with stress levels and anxiety. If not, a window sill garden is great too. Some programs, like ours at Stephen’s Place, offer a garden club with a gardening area, qualified instructor and a greenhouse. Our program teaches watering schedules, soil types, growing plants, tending to the garden, overwintering (including how to make a great bug hotel), healthy eating, and we also regularly partake in plant studies. Many of our residents love to garden and study plants. It also gives them opportunities to socialize with their peers.
Transportation
Knowing how to get around town makes just about anyone feel pretty cool and it’s a very useful skill to have. If your adult child can drive on their own, you could help them learn how to drive and get their driver’s license.
Another good way to help them prepare (wether they have a driver’s license or not) is to teach them how to use public transportation. Teaching could include where to catch the bus from, which the main routes are for their daily activities, how much the bus costs and who to give their money to, or how to swipe a monthly pass while getting on the bus. This also provides a moment to caution against hitchhiking or talking to strangers in or out of cars.
Safety and Personal Boundaries
Speaking of caution, teaching safety and personal boundaries is important when preparing your adult child for the world. Individuals with disabilities are more susceptible to abuse and exploitation, and are sometimes even actively targeted. So it’s crucial that your child understands consent and appropriate types of behavior. Talking to your child about what is and is not appropriate behaviour is key. To do this you can run through scenarios and help them to listen to and develop their gut feeling.
As important as teaching your child how to identify shady behavior is teaching them some ways to handle it and keep themselves safe. Giving your child a structure, including ways to respond and leave without provoking the abusive person, gives them something to reference if a situation ever occurs.
If someone makes them feel uncomfortable, they need to know how to voice their boundaries without falling into the trap of pretending that everything is fine. They need to know that if someone is being inappropriate, your child is well within their rights to be blunt. This is huge because some people lack the confidence to speak up and can become afraid that other people are always right, even if they’re being inappropriate. As well as this, an important piece of learning how to place personal boundaries is for your child to understand and respect the boundaries of others.
Safety at Home
If your child is living alone, with a housemate or a group, you’ll want to make sure to install smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. If the place already has smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, be sure to check them and you can also add fresh batteries so that you know how long they’ve been in use.
If you’re not up for installing detectors or batteries yourself, there are applications such as Task Rabbit where a person will come and do odd jobs for you fairly inexpensively. You can also get alarms that are connected to each other for optimal safety Nest Protect Smoke/Carbon Monoxide Wired Alarm or Nest Protect Battery Powered Alarm. The reason that connected alarms are the safest is because a fire could start in one room, but alarm is further away. So, say for instance your child is wearing headphones in a room far from where the first alarm was triggered. In this case, connected alarms would alert them sooner. In a fire, every second counts.
Connected ‘smart’ alarms provide you with a phone application that will ping you if the alarms are not working or have been triggered. Some of them will also provide spoken instructions directly from the alarm. Another reason that connected smart alarms are safer is that it gives you the quick option to call the fire brigade to the address.
Note: When installing a kitchen fire alarm, keep in mind that a regular smoke alarm may get triggered often. For the kitchen, many fire departments recommend installing an alarm that is triggered by heat. Nest Protect 2 alarms have this capability.
Teaching your child how to get out of a fire is imperative. Show them the exits, how to get down as low as possible, how to exit from a window if viable, to not open doors if they do not need to and to check the heat of a door with the back of their hand before opening to avoid deadly backdraft, how to cover their mouths, to crawl if possible, and to never go back for items or go back inside until the fire dept has okayed it. There are fire safety instructions here and here. Run through these procedures with them in the house or apartment until you feel confident that they have it down.
You should also keep a fire extinguisher near the kitchen and a first aid kit in the bathroom. Make sure your child knows how to use it.
As long as it doesn’t encroach on your child’s independence, adding video security cameras to the exterior and (with their permission) interior of your child’s apartment is good in case of a break in or a fall.
Disclaimer: We are not professional fire fighters. Information on fire safety is updated regularly. Please research fire safety independently of this article.
Every Person Deserves a Fulfilling Life
It can be bittersweet when your child leaves home. On one hand there’s a lot of worry, and on the other, they’re going off to build their own life. You did everything to raise them well, and now it’s time to have a little faith in their capabilities.
Knowing that your adult child with special needs has the skills they need to manage life makes the transition much smoother and sets them up for success. With knowledge and support, a person can hit their full potential and live the life they imagined.
For some adults with special needs, moving into their own is not an option. That’s where independent apartment communities and group living for adults with special needs comes in. The right community will keep your child safe, healthy and give them daily opportunities to learn skills that allow them to be more independent.
About Stephen’s Place
Stephen’s Place is an independent apartment community for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities, located in Vancouver, WA (7 minutes from Portland, OR).
If you have a loved one with developmental or intellectual disabilities who is looking for a community to live in, please contact us for more information.
Stephen’s Place is a private-pay apartment community due to our state-of-the-art amenities and programs. We are a nonprofit and do not profit from our community. We are private pay because we spend more than some housing communities to ensure that our residents are comfortable and can safely live their lives with independence and dignity.
