Episode 3: The Importance Of Recognizing ‘The Dignity Of Every Person’ (With Wendy Jones)

Welcome to the third episode of the Thrive Dispatches Podcast, from Thrive Center for Children, Families, and Communities at Georgetown University. Every two weeks, Center Director Dr. Matt Biel hosts child and family health experts and advocates for a personal and illuminating conversation.

For questions, comments or ideas for future episodes, please email us at: thrivecenter@georgetown.edu

About the episode:

In this episode of Thrive Dispatches, Matt welcomes Thrive faculty member Wendy Jones to discuss her work supporting parents with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Wendy shares her approach to strengths-based parenting support and her deep commitment to fostering self-determination among the families she serves.

Drawing on her experience as a bilingual special educator and her current role leading Georgetown’s Parenting Support Project, Wendy explains how helping parents understand their children’s developmental stages can prevent frustration and promote thriving across generations.

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Summary:

In the following excerpt, Matt and Wendy discuss what it means to take a strengths-based approach when working with parents who have intellectual and developmental disabilities:

Matt: What’s a strategy you use, Wendy, to draw out from parents and caregivers the strength that they see? Is it, do you do that by asking about particular stories or anecdotes or successes that they see at home? What’s the best way to get at the true strengths of young people with disabilities?

Wendy: Part of the thing that we do, some of the approaches that we use in the parenting support program is to really ask families multiple ways, “What are you proudest of your child about? What are the things that make you proud about your child?” That’s one way. Another way is, “Tell me three things that you love about your child. What are three things that you enjoy about your child? What do you love to do with your child? When does your child laugh the most with you? When do you laugh the most with your child?”

I think that we say in education, we say in early care that parents are their first teachers. We say that parents are the experts in their children. And yet, if we really believe that, then we should be giving them the opportunity to teach us. But when we come, when we lead with a needs-based perspective, rather than a strengths-based perspective, we often lose the opportunity to hear from parents.

Matt: What’s so beautiful about the way that you, the sequence of those questions that you asked, starting with three things that you love about your child and a success that they had and about something that you’re proud of, is that those are not just feel-good questions. Those are actually, they give you this window into both the child and the parents at their best, and also into the aspirations that the parents have for their children, because that’s what people value most.

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