What If?

So many times we wonder about things that could go wrong with our children. And here is where many of us can come up with more than one frightening moment in the past that hopefully turned out alright. When Marisa was 14 years old I felt it was time for her to learn to use a key. Now this is not one of those small moments that you can expect your child to instantly learn from. It is one of many small moments over an extended period of time that add up to making this a learning experience.

How should I go about teaching Marisa to use a key? That was the question. For children with special needs, learning to open a door with a key should be approached in teeny, tiny steps just like children learn to talk or read in small stages over time. In fact, for Marisa, it took a good two years to learn to use a key to open the door when she came home from school each day. It was well worth the time and effort it took for her to accomplish this goal ... and in this case, she didn't even need to earn points on her goal chart as a motivator. Rather, she knew that by learning to use the key when she came home, I was helping her earn the special gift of trust and independence. She so wanted to be able to do this one thing on her own, that she was willing to follow through with the steps required to learn the skill without having to earn points.

We began with my usual routine of meeting the bus as she arrived home. I had the key for her. I would show her how to hold the key in the right position for placing in the keyhole. Over a number of months I let her practice placing the key in the proper position. The next step was learning to turn the key the correct way to open the door. Once she was inside she needed to learn how to successfully shut off our house alarm and then reset it.

When I was certain that she was able to open the door and turn off the house alarm, Marisa and I needed to decide together where she could safely keep her key attached in her backpack, so that she would be able to retrieve it and place it back once she was inside the house. Again, for many months I met her outside. I watched her take her key from her backpack, use it to open the door without my help, turn off the alarm, reset it and put her key away in the designated place in her backpack.

The day came when I told her I would be watching from inside the house. She was so excited, she could hardly wait to come home from school! Many days I watched Marisa from inside the house, before I was absolutely sure she had learned this skill well!

Then one day I was coming home from an appointment and was caught up in an awful traffic jam. I was only 5 minutes from my house, and Marisa was not due home for another 30 minutes. I didn't think there would be a problem, but as I watched the minutes tick by, I started to get nervous. The cars were barely moving. What if I don't make it home in time? Will Marisa be able to open the door as successfully as she had been doing for these last few weeks? She was about to be tested!

Then the moment of truth arrived. The day had come when I would find out if all our hard work would pay off. As I inched closer to the house in an endless line of crawling traffic, I realized with a sinking feeling that I would not be home in time. I wasn't sure if I was more nervous about whether the bus driver would not let her off the bus because my car wasn't in the driveway, or whether Marisa would safely let herself in to the house and shut off the alarm in time.

Then I saw Marisa's bus pass me by in the opposite direction. I called the house from my cell phone, but there was no answer. Was she inside, or was she struggling with the key outside the house? If she was there, she wasn't answering the phone. I decided to leave a message in the hope that she would hear it if she was in the house.

I arrived home in a panic, racing down the driveway and coming to a screeching halt. I raced inside and realized that the house alarm was on. I turned off the alarm and listened. It was quiet in the house. Oh! ... I figured Marisa's bus didn't drop her off after all. Seeing my car was not there when they arrived, they probably decided to keep her on their run for a while longer. I was actually disappointed that this was the case. Then I walked into the kitchen. There she stood ... her eyes and mouth wide open with a questioning look! "Marisa! You let yourself IN and turned the ALARM back on? WOW! You did such an amazing job!" I said as tears of joy ran down my face. "Are you okay?" I asked. "You weren't here!" she said in a somewhat nervous voice. "I know. I was stuck in traffic, but you were only alone for a few minutes, and look how well you did letting yourself in! You should be so proud of yourself!" I said.

This What If? is one I knew I would never have to worry about again. Those two years teaching Marisa to use the key to the house were well worth every minute.