NDNorth: Hope for Parents

Recently, our team at New Day North has had some exciting opportunities to network with some Chinese projects in Inner Mongolia that are providing support to parents who have children with special needs.  Developing these connections is helping us explore resources for us to learn more as we provide care for orphans with special needs.  In addition, we see promising possibilities to facilitate more help being provided to Chinese families who might adopt children with special needs, and for more birth-families to keep their children with special needs.  It seems that many of the children in the orphanage could still be with their biological families if only their parents had been provided with the encouragement, support, and resources they had needed when they learned that their child had special needs.

Last week, a few of us were able to take an exploratory trip to Xilinhaote (a city in Inner Mongolia). We visited three different special education schools in the area. The schools all varied greatly in size, availability of trained staff, resources, and the ages and needs of the students they served. But all of the schools expressed a need for more training.

One of the highlights from our trip was being able to participate in one of the school’s parent training sessions and provide some training on how to facilitate communication with children who are non-verbal. It was so encouraging to see these parents who were so eager to learn and support one another. We ate lunch with many of the moms after the training session and they shared many stories of the challenges that they face as parents of children with special needs. Many of the moms (with tears in their eyes) thanked the school for giving them hope.

It was so encouraging to see how this school was meeting parents' needs and helping them to care for their children! But, there are many parents who are left without this kind of training and emotional support. We are still in the beginning stages of learning how, as we provide care for orphans, we can facilitate encouragement for parents with children who have special needs, but we hope that we can grow in supporting these parents more and more!