At only 23 months of age, Conor Gaffney is a mentor of sorts.
Conor is a peer model in the toddler class at UCLA's Intervention Program for Children With Disabilities. His job: to inspire his physically or mentally disabled classmates, to show them by doing.
His mother hopes that Conor, in turn, is learning from less fortunate children "to become more compassionate. It's been wonderful for him to see kids with special needs," says Nicole Gaffney, 32.
She knows better than most the value of this. While Conor is a healthy, active child, his 4-year-old brother, Aidan, has an undiagnosed disorder, is ventilator-dependent and uses a wheelchair. Aidan graduated from the toddler program where, his mother says, he "always felt totally accepted," and now attends a UCLA preschool for the severely challenged.
Gaffney is so enthusiastic about the peer model concept that she plans to place son Declan, a healthy 6-month-old, in the toddler program next year.
UCLA's peer model concept, among the first in the nation for toddlers, was initiated in 1974 with a federal grant at the instigation of Kit Kehr, the intervention program's lead teacher and executive director. Kehr, 52, who has a philosophy degree from UCLA and a state-issued children's center permit, wanted to see what would happen if disabled children were exposed daily at a very young age to non-disabled children.
There were many unanswered questions. How would the disabled kids react to seeing those their own age with skills they don't possess? Kids who walk without thinking about it, kids who are verbally facile?
Another question, Kehr says, was how parents of the disabled toddlers would respond. "Would it be too depressing for them? Too painful?" It appears these fears were unfounded.
"I feel we've been successful with the majority of the families," says Judy Howard, professor of clinical pediatrics at UCLA and director of the developmental studies program in the pediatrics department. "We have really assisted and guided the parents as they come from a time of much chaos, confusion, anger and denial to a time of being competent about what their child is going to need."
But, she adds, "I think where we have not kept up with the times is we have not got what we call a full-inclusion classroom. We only have a few peer models. We don't have an equal number of children with and without disabilities"--the so-called "natural environment" mandated by Congress in the Americans With Disabilities Act.
