6.26.2008

Would You Put a Cheeky T-Shirt on Your Special Needs Child?

My opinion on the matter, as someone who loooooves her collection of nose-thumbing tees:

Cheeky t-shirts have their place, if thoughtfully chosen. Humor can grease the public social skids for our children, especially those with visible disabilities and/or limited communication skills. If your child has the language skills to have a conversation about the shirt, even better. But it's important to not underestimate our children's impish sense of humor.

Your take?

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4 comments:

  1. We totally do. They amuse us, even if they amuse no one else.

    Our favorite was, "Keep watching, I might do a trick."
    Another current fave is a shirt that has a graphic of a multiple choice question with bubbles for the answer. The first three are vareties of "I'm ignoring you." The last bubble, filled in, is "All of the above."

    Other parents of special needs kids got huge laughs out of the "Keep watching" shirt.

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  2. Anonymous5:23 PM

    Not a parent but I worked at a camp for kids with Autism and I always enjoyed the shirts some of the kids came with. My favourite said something like "I'm not stupid, rude, or bad. I have Autism. What's your excuse?
    For the most part it seems that if the child with autism is in a cheeky shirt they come from a family where the non-autistic members would wear cheeky shirts.

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  3. When Aj broke his arm and my husband had a huge shoulder splint follwoin surgery-I bought them matching shirts that said. "I do all my own stunts". Not all that cheeky, but amusing. Yes, I would put a cheeky shirt on my kid. Aj had a shirt that siad "Batteries not required". I love that you do. Some people might see it as bad taste. I see it as a way of finding humor in the quirkiness of it all and with that, a way of coping.

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  4. "For the most part it seems that if the child with autism is in a cheeky shirt they come from a family where the non-autistic members would wear cheeky shirts."

    This is very true. My daughter and son wear the cheeky interchangably. We have all worn the Dr Pepper and Serenity shirts. I would wearing the shirts with sayings on if the second half of the sayings were not lost under my considerable rack.
    "Keep watching" with just the top of a clip-art man's head to his eyes isn't cheeky, it's a dare.

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Respectful disagreement encouraged.