Man, no doubt, is a member of society. Throughout his life, he is in society and must be able to adapt to situations, choose different models of behavior. Performing several social roles - a student at school, a family member at home, etc., - a child from an early age learns the rules according to which people act and live. This process (i.e., the process of assimilation of social norms by a child) is called socialization.
Young children are socialized through parents. They quickly enough and without much difficulty master the skills of behavior at home and outside its walls. Looking at the parents, the kids also get the skills of social and household orientation - that is, they learn to behave in everyday life, to perform everyday activities. For them, this process becomes natural and simple.
It is much more difficult to socialize for children left without parental care or for children with disabilities (limited health). How can they be and where to get the knowledge necessary for independent living, if there is no clear example in front of their eyes or, for example, health features do not allow you to adopt certain skills?
What is SBO?
Social-household orientation is a set of skills and abilities necessary to adjust their own behavior when interacting with objects and other people in social situations. In simple words, this is the ability to independently decide what to do in a given situation outside the usual algorithm of study or work.
Things that are familiar to us, such as cooking dinner, paying bills, talking with strangers, etc. for other people who are deprived of the opportunity to socialize in childhood, are a difficult task, the solution of which requires special work on it, training and efforts.
Who needs this type of socialization?
The ability to navigate household things is a necessary basis for the future independent life of any person. After all, this is the basics of hygiene, and home care, and cooking. You can’t just work out the recipes and tell you in which places these or other things should lie: you need to be able to navigate the situation, because in everyday life it is not often possible to adhere to a single plan and schedule.
Usually, children get all the skills they need in the family: just see how their parents behave at home, and later start helping them around the house. From parents, the child learns how to behave in different situations: at home and on the street. Gradually, task by task, the child learns to act independently. Even if the child did not learn all the household skills by the time he moves away from his parents (for example, he is leaving to study in another city), he still has a number of advantages. He knows how to behave in the transport and the store, where to buy food, etc. Most often, in case of difficulties, the child can always call his parents and find out what should be done.
Unfortunately, if he did not grow up in a family, but in an orphanage, or has limited health opportunities, such simple everyday situations as a broken plate or new bedding, different from the previous one, can lead him into a dead end. It is not easy to decide what to do in a given situation if nothing similar has happened before and there is absolutely no one to consult. For example, graduates of orphanages very often do not know how to cook, do not know how to act with bills for an apartment: for many years, these questions were decided for them by educators, teachers, cooks and the administration! Such children need a social orientation as a subject studied in lessons, along with mathematics and language. A number of programs have been developed for them to help them master the norms of behavior. As part of their training, they specifically take a course in social orientation (SBO).
SBO Lesson Objectives
Each teacher who deals with children and adults in need of a home orientation, sets himself certain tasks:
- To close the gaps in knowledge about the household and household acquired in the family (for example, if the child was overly tutored, or, on the contrary, did not receive enough parental attention, or if the child has limited health abilities and parents do not have the pedagogical knowledge necessary to adapt the child to its features).
- To give ideas about household items and how and why they are used, how to handle them correctly, how to store them and what can be replaced.
- Develop skills of interaction with household items and actions in everyday situations.
- To form a culture of behavior in economic and domestic aspects, to teach how to behave in public places.
- Learn to avoid panic when interacting with new and unknown objects or in unprocessed situations.
What does the SBO program include?
The course of social orientation includes certain sections. So, in the classroom, students will take a course on hygiene, selection of clothing, nutrition, organization of interaction in the family, communicating with people in society, housing, first aid, trade and transport, etc. Each section studies its direction in quite some detail and instills self-service and housekeeping skills.
The social orientation program for children with different problems is different. For example, a child with mental retardation in the classroom in the “Family” section will be told about what it is and how responsibilities are distributed among family members, taught the rules of family behavior. In the "Trade" section, you will learn to distinguish stores and make necessary purchases, and in the "Transport" section, you will learn how to behave in public transport.
For children from orphanages, such activities are a chance to start an independent life and create their own strong family. There are frequent cases when apartments were taken from graduates of orphanages for tax evasion because its owner simply did not know what to pay for electricity, gas and water - after all, no one had told him about it! Such simple things for many become a real discovery for them. The social and everyday orientation of students and graduates of boarding schools and orphanages in such cases is simply necessary.
Directions of work on SBO
In the teaching of social orientation, two areas stand out. The first is aimed at developing life skills in an educational institution and at home. A culture of behavior in society and the simplest everyday skills are being formed. Skills of social orientation for children with disabilities are associated with household tasks with minimal outside help.
The second direction is designed to achieve more distant goals - to teach the child to live an independent adult life. This is the ability to interact with various services, organizations. The skills to use public transport and visit public places, to behave in a crowd, to communicate with other people are developing.
How are classes at home?
When a child is healthy and grows up in a family (complete or incomplete) or has minor health restrictions and is surrounded by attention and care, household socialization does not stand out in his life as a separate subject and does not become a problem.
The social and everyday orientation of preschoolers is to help parents do small things: wash dishes, remove toys, and behave “decently” at a party. All this is so natural for the child and the parent that they often do not pay attention to it as something special: it goes without saying that mothers and fathers teach the child independence and behavior standards. Pupils can do things more complicated, for example, go to school by public transport, shop, distribute pocket money.
For many people from ordinary families, it is difficult to imagine a situation when someone is deprived of the simplest social skills, because no one has ever been vaccinated on purpose.
Therefore, we can say that in a home environment, children learn social orientation, adopting the experience of parents' behavior and gradually learning to perform various duties at home.
It is worth noting that in seemingly prosperous families, children may also have problems with household orientation. For example, if a parent takes care of his child excessively: takes him to school and picks him up from school, does not give him money, preferring to buy everything on his own, does not give the child home responsibilities. Or, on the contrary, the parents are so preoccupied with themselves that they do not pay enough attention to the child: he is deprived of joint household chores, he is not told with him how he should behave. In both cases, this will lead to problems in an adult, independent life.
Solving the problem of household socialization in a "regular" school
The child studies not only in the family - he spends a lot of time in educational institutions. Therefore, social and household orientation is given attention at school. Traditionally, these classes are called “technology” or “labor”. Pupils of Soviet times remember how girls learned to sew and cook, and boys made various household items at labor lessons.
In the modern school, this subject is somewhat modified: classes either do not correspond to the existing reality, or suffer due to the lack of training equipment or competent teachers.
The school’s social orientation program definitely needs to be improved these days. From time to time, the question arises as to whether it is worth uniting boys and girls in the classroom.For example, in some schools, boys study programming and robotics in such lessons, and girls learn traditional cooking and sewing, which undoubtedly upsets many parents whose daughters are interested in computers. There are not enough manuals, textbooks, materials and equipment, as well as relevant sections, selected taking into account current trends.
SBO in schools abroad
The experience of America in this matter can be considered positive. According to the American educational system, school students have the right to choose the courses they want to study during the school year. There is no separate subject “labor” in their schools, but there are many courses that generally fit into the SBO program. There is even a school beauty course and make-up. Pupils have the right to choose which course they need to take in a semester, and thus fill their domestic gaps.
SBO of children without parental care
In Russia, until recently, orphanages did not provide knowledge in the field of social orientation. Graduates of such institutions remained disoriented for a long time after leaving the walls of the orphanage. Such an educational omission created many negative situations, as a result of which recent pupils most often turned out to be the victims, who simply could not organize their life and the life of their family, who did not receive housekeeping skills, money management, and who did not know their civic responsibilities.
At the moment, orphanages are required to educate pupils in everyday life and a culture of behavior. To do this, special rooms are created in them, equipped as kitchens and laundries, where children learn to look after the house, cook, handle household appliances. Training rooms for SBO classes simulate an apartment: there is a kitchen where they learn to cook and handle equipment, and a bathroom for hygiene lessons, as well as a living room, a children's and a training zone. This is especially important for children with disabilities, as it is most difficult for them to adapt to life without constant monitoring and support from specialists.
"Educational apartments"
Social orientation classes for adults who have left the walls of orphanages, but are still illiterate in everyday life, are most often carried out by private organizations, living through voluntary non-state funding and individual donations. They specially rent apartments, equip them for study and allow their adult students to fill knowledge gaps under the supervision of volunteers and educators. Thanks to the work of such educational apartments, yesterday’s graduates learn to take care of the house, themselves and their own children, because it often happens that the former pupils of orphanages who have not received love and attention simply do not know how to take care of their child.
Of great importance are such apartments for children and adults with disabilities, both brought up with parents and guardians, and those left without guardianship. Not all parents, no matter how caring they are, are able to competently approach the upbringing of a special child. It often happens that a child with special needs is overly tutelary and deprived of the opportunity to learn to solve their domestic problems on their own. In educational apartments, a specialist works with students to look after the pupils and provide the necessary domestic knowledge and practice. The resulting theory is immediately worked out, which helps to consolidate knowledge. Sometimes students live in an apartment, training household skills: they are on duty in cleanliness and the kitchen in turn, go to the store and solve the problems of distributing finances.
The apartment is of great benefit to people with mental and intellectual disabilities. They allow them to socialize, understand their responsibility to other people and gradually expand the zone of independence, which very often they lack in life with their parents. Meanwhile, such group activities have a positive effect on the socialization and integration of such people in society.
Household adaptation for children and adults with disabilities
The development of social orientation of children and adults with disabilities is consistent with their capabilities. An individual approach and taking into account the student's health capabilities adjusts the curriculum program. So, visually impaired and hard of hearing people will logically experience various difficulties in everyday life, but at the same time, of course, there will be common moments.
Regardless of the diagnosis, each student must go through and learn all sections of the course with varying degrees of depth and taking into account individual characteristics.