I think parents of children with disabilities have it particularly hard. We begin to think, maybe they can’t do it, and we feel bad for them, so we coddle. It’s a pretty natural progression actually.
I remember a parent of one of my second grade students in a regular education class coming in to speak to me once. She began to talk about math, and I got excited. I was ready to tell her that her son had the highest grade in the class. Instead, she began to talk about his disability (he has autism). I was so confused, because his autism was entirely irrelevant to his performance in math class. In fact, he was the only student in the class, who consistently answered and explained with accuracy every word problem I threw at him.
Then she told me her son was complaining that the tests were too difficult, and she wondered if I could modify the tests for him. Her son has autism, and he is brilliant. However, due to a range of experiences, he had come to fear challenges, and his mother was unknowingly contributing to this fear by asking that I make a test easier for him. Where his autism was most hindering him was that he could not grasp that he was doing excellently or that a 95% was good news.