Self-Advocacy Starts Before Adulthood
As parents of children with disabilities, much of our time is spent advocating. We advocate during school meetings. We advocate with service providers. We advocate when systems become confusing, when supports are insufficient, and when our children need someone to help others understand their strengths and needs. Advocacy often becomes such a central part of parenting that it can be difficult to imagine stepping back from that role.
Yet one of the most important long-term goals for many children is not simply having an advocate. It is learning to become an advocate for themselves. Self-advocacy is often associated with adulthood, but its foundations begin much earlier. Every time a child learns to express a preference, ask for help, communicate a need, set a boundary, or participate in decisions that affect them, they are developing skills that contribute to self-advocacy.
These moments may seem small.
A child asking for a break when they feel overwhelmed.A student explaining how they learn best.A teenager participating in an IEP meeting.A young adult requesting an accommodation.
Each of these experiences helps build confidence, independence, and self-understanding.
For many families, self-advocacy can feel complicated. Parents work tirelessly to protect their children and ensure their needs are met. Allowing children to take a more active role in communicating those needs can sometimes feel uncomfortable, especially when mistakes are part of the learning process. However, self-advocacy is not about expecting children to navigate challenges alone. It is about gradually creating opportunities for them to participate in decisions that affect their lives.
In our previous EPN blog, When You Feel Like the Only One Fighting: Navigating Isolation in Advocacy, we explored the emotional reality many parents experience when they feel responsible for carrying the weight of advocacy alone. While parents often remain their child's strongest advocate, part of the long-term journey involves helping children gradually develop the skills to advocate for themselves. Self-advocacy does not replace parental advocacy. Rather, it builds upon it, creating opportunities for children to better understand their strengths, communicate their needs, and participate in decisions that affect their lives.
Self-advocacy offers another example of growth that may not be immediately reflected in formal assessments. A child who begins speaking up about their needs, expressing preferences, or demonstrating increased confidence may be developing skills that have lifelong significance, even when those gains are difficult to measure. Parents can support self-advocacy in practical ways throughout everyday life.
Offering choices can help children practice decision-making. Encouraging them to share opinions during family discussions can reinforce that their voice matters. Helping children understand their strengths, challenges, accommodations, and learning styles can build self-awareness. As children grow older, involving them in educational planning meetings can help them understand their rights and become active participants in their own support systems.
Importantly, self-advocacy looks different for every child. Some children communicate verbally. Others communicate through assistive technology, gestures, visual supports, or alternative communication methods. The goal is not a particular form of communication. The goal is ensuring that each child has meaningful opportunities to express themselves and be heard.
The Harvard Center on the Developing Child's resource, How-to: 5 Steps for Brain-Building Serve and Return, reminds parents that some of the most powerful opportunities to support a child's development occur during ordinary everyday interactions. The concept of "serve and return" describes the back-and-forth exchanges that happen when a child communicates through words, gestures, facial expressions, sounds, or actions and a caring adult responds in a meaningful way. Harvard's five-step framework encourages adults to notice a child's focus of attention, respond with encouragement, name what the child is experiencing, take turns in the interaction, and help children navigate beginnings and endings. These seemingly simple exchanges help strengthen the neural connections that support language, social-emotional development, learning, and relationships. Perhaps most importantly, the resource reminds parents that meaningful developmental support does not require expensive programs or elaborate activities. Consistent, responsive interactions during daily routines—whether during meals, play, errands, or quiet moments together—can have a lasting impact on a child's growth and well-being.
The resource explores how self-determination skills develop over time and why opportunities for choice-making, decision-making, and self-expression are important throughout childhood and adolescence. As parents, it can be helpful to remember that advocacy is not an all-or-nothing process. Children do not wake up one day fully prepared to speak for themselves. Instead, self-advocacy develops through countless small experiences where children learn that their thoughts, feelings, needs, and perspectives matter. Those experiences often begin at home.
Parent Reflection Question
What is one opportunity you could create this week for your child to express a preference, make a decision, or communicate a need in a way that feels meaningful to them?
Conclusion
Parents will always play an important role in advocating for their children. Yet one of the greatest gifts we can provide is helping children discover and trust their own voice.
At Empowering Parents Network, we encourage families to recognize self-advocacy as a skill that develops gradually through everyday experiences. By creating opportunities for children to participate, communicate, and make choices, parents help build the confidence and self-awareness that support lifelong independence.
Sometimes advocacy begins with speaking for our children.
Over time, it can evolve into helping them learn to speak for themselves.
What is one opportunity you could create this week for your child to express a preference, make a decision, or communicate a need in a way that feels meaningful to them?
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Learn more and access parent resources at empoweringparentsnetwork.org, or follow @empowering_parents_network for updates and support.
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