Daily living skills and transport

Scottishcity24

I know that no 2 people are the same or learn at the same speed. Just in general is there a rough age that people with learning disabilities etc can for example tie their own shoelaces, manage to think about how they are going to spend their time that day, use public transport.

Rosie_Scope

Hi @Scottishcity24, that's a tough one to answer. As you mentioned, no two people are the same and it will depend on the severity of their learning disability and how it affects the individual in question. Different people will have different abilities and will develop at different rates.

I don't think there are any general guidelines for when people with learning disabilities should be able to do certain tasks as it will vary so much for each person.

If you need any advice or support for someone with a learning disability, Mencap have some services that might be useful to you:

Access Learning Disability Advice and Support | Mencap

anisty

It depends on the level of the learning disability. People with profound learning disabilities might never learn any of the skills you list.

My son has a mild learning disability but has autism too. He attended mainstream school for both primary and secondary. He spent a lot of time out of class in a nurture unit at secondary level.

He is 26 now. He can tie shoelaces but i can't remember when he learned to do that. A long time ago i think.

Planning his day he can't do but that's more to do with his autism. He has a lot of difficulty initiating tasks so, if nothing is planned for him, he will spend all day in his room on his computer.

However, he does attend a support group, does some voluntary work and also has 6 hours' paid supported employment each week. Every week follows the exact same pattern and he has been doing these same activities for about 8 years now (obvs not during the pandemic)

The bus - that did take a long time to learn🤣🤣

He had some training from an autism charity which was brilliant.

I started teaching him one bus route when he was 16 yrs old. I did not realise how many steps there were to board a bus til i started to teach him!

It took MONTHS!!

From how to say where he was going, where to stand, how to stand in a queue, what if 2 buses pulled in at once.

Finally, he had been managing to travel on this one route for many months. And back home. But we had never taught him how to get off a bus!

He always waited til the bus stopped and then got off and we met him.

Until one day, no one else was getting off at his stop and he stayed on! My hubby had to drive after the bus all the way down the motorway!

By 17yrs i think he had mastered one route at one time. He just went once a week to his support group at the exact same times. If the bus did not turn up on time to bring him home, we had to go and get him in the car. And we had to phone him. He would not think to call us. He just would stand at the stop long after everyone else had given up on any bus coming.

So, he is 26 now. He still does just the one route but he can do all different times. He has a smart phone and the buses have trackers on now so he is great with late buses. Just last year, a support worker helped him learn to change buses in town so he could get to the hospital. He picked up the change quite fast.

But he didn't like it! So he is just back to his familiar route. He sticks to the same bus number. Other buses go to the same place but he won't take them!

My son will never be able to learn to drive. We hope he might be able to move out of our home one day but he doesn't qualify for supported housing as he has no night needs.

They have offered housing with a care package but he is nowhere near that just now. He does talk and has no physical disability. He is very vulnerable and naive. I'd put him around 12yrs of age.