Inclusion and Independence

"It's so great that you let her be independent."

"You do so many cool things."

"It's so awesome you guys let her do almost everything."

"You are crazy to be trying to take a wheelchair out in a foot of snow, on an inaccessible trail,..."

Ok, I made the last one up because sometimes I think I've lost my mind this time. My thought process is something like this: I wonder if her chair can do that if the freewheel is attached. I mean worse case, one of us ends up carrying Evanna while the other carries her wheelchair over/around whatever obstacle we find. Usually Josh is up for the challenge with me. I'm also more likely to think these things about a planned outing I think of as fairly simple for an able-bodied person, and other adults (who don't know I'm thinking of volunteering them to help) will be attending. I told one of the maintenance guys at the durable medical equipment place that one of these times I'm going to find the wheelchair's limit and have to bring it in to repair whatever I broke trying to get that thing somewhere it can't go.

So why do these things? Why do we encourage experimentation with crawling and climbing? Why do we get out the kinetic sand, the play-doh, the paints, the markers? Why do we let her crawl around at the park? Put her on a Wild Thing ride on? Buy her a plasma bike? Push her chair through the snow, rain, gravel, trail, pumpkin patch? Let her plug in her extension? Push her food/water? Let her give herself medicine if she's taking one during the day?

Two reasons:

1) If we always do everything for her, always push her, always carry her, she'll never develop the strength, stamina, skills, and will to be independent as an adult. If she doesn't develop these areas, she'll be limited in what she can do and could become dependent on an aide for basic needs. We don't want to inadvertently limit her life down the road by "helping" her now.

2) Scott said it well and inspired this post:

It's our family culture. We decided many years ago to live as a family unit and expose our children to many and varied experiences. We wanted them to experience and do life and not just focus on learning from a book. Thus we go. And because Evanna is in our family, she goes too.