Parents' Role in Transition for Handicapped Youth. Overview. ERIC Digest No. 62.

Parents have a major influence on their children's attitudes toward work and life. Handicapped youth, who have more difficulty than other youth in making the transition from school to work and adult life, have a special need for parental guidance. Parents can play key roles in transition, especially in the areas of career exploration, job search and survival, independent living skills, and collaboration with educators and other service providers. Parents can share some career exploration activities, such as identifying famous people who have achieved success despite their disabilities, learning about work site modification, and taking the adolescent to various businesses and pointing out the different jobs and their duties. In the area of job search and survival, parents can demonstrate the techniques of finding job leads, assist in the preparation of a resume, practice interviewing, and help develop good work habits. Parents can identify those independent living skills already gained as well as those that need to be developed in the areas of transportation, housing and home management, financial management, decision making, and interpersonal skills. Finally, parents can collaborate with educators in developing the student's Individualized Education Program and monitoring their child's progress in following it. In all of these transition areas, parents are important role models. Their children form opinions about the value of work, different careers, and self-worth from what they observe their parents saying and doing. The example parents present their children may be their most important role in the transition process. (KC)