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Feature: These Very Special People
There are many people in this world who are not like you or I, people who have special needs. We are supposed to fulfil these needs but very often we fail to do so, especially the emotional and mental needs. They are special people but very often mistakenly labelled ‘retards’ or ‘freaks’.
They are not really different from us from inside; it is just that they lack certain things that we seem to take for granted. We have to understand that although they cannot talk properly or even think logically, they still feel like us. They are meant to be loved, not repulsed.
Unfortunately most of us are too busy living our perfect little lives to be bothered with trying to comprehend them. To understand the difficulties they have to tackle, we first have to examine the problems they face.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a condition that becomes apparent in some children in the preschool and early school years.
It is hard for these children to control their behaviour and pay attention. It is estimated that between three and five per cent of children have ADHD. It was first described by Dr Heinrich Hoffman in 1845 who talked about a group of impulsive children with significant behavioural problems, caused by a genetic dysfunction and not by poor child rearing — children who today would be easily recognized as having ADHD.
The principal characteristics of ADHD are inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Because many normal children may have these symptoms, but at a low level, it is important that the child receive a thorough examination and appropriate diagnosis by a well-qualified professional.
Symptoms of ADHD will appear over the course of many months, often with the symptoms of impulsiveness and hyperactivity preceding those of inattention, which may not emerge for a year or more. Different symptoms may appear in different settings, depending on the demands the situation may pose for the child’s self-control. A child who “can’t sit still” or is otherwise disruptive will be noticeable in school, but the inattentive daydreamer may be overlooked.
Yet both may have different types of ADHD. When the child’s hyperactivity, distractibility, poor concentration, or impulsivity begin to affect performance in school, social relationships with other children, or behaviour at home, ADHD may be suspected.
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is not just a severe reading disorder characterized by reversals. And it is not due to brain damage as traditionally thought for the past century. It is a syndrome of many and varied symptoms which are due to a simple signal-scrambling disturbance of the inner ear (cerebella-vestibular) origin. In other words the inner ear acts as a “fine-tuner” for all motor (balance/coordination/rhythm) signals leaving the brain, and all sensory and related cognitive signals entering it. As a result, normal thinking brains will have difficulty processing the scrambled or distorted signals received.
As noted, dyslexia is not just a severe reading disorder characterized by reversals. It is a syndrome of many and varied reading and non-reading symptoms such as poor handwriting, slurred speech, difficulty with maths, spelling and grammar, faulty memory, directional uncertainty, impaired concentration, difficulty with coordination functions, low self esteem, physical problems and phobias and obsessive/compulsive disorders.
Mental retardation
Mental retardation is a term used when a person has certain limitations in mental functioning and in skills such as communicating, taking care of him/herself, and social skills. These limitations will cause a child to learn and develop more slowly than a typical child.
Children with mental retardation may take longer to learn to speak, walk, and take care of their personal needs such as dressing or eating. They are likely to have trouble learning in school. They will learn, but it will take them longer. There may be some things they cannot learn.
Causes of mental retardation are numerous, but a specific reason for mental retardation is determined in only 25 per cent of the cases. Mental retardation is diagnosed by looking at the person’s IQ or intellectual functioning and whether the person has the skills he or she needs to live independently (called adaptive behaviour or adaptive functioning).
Mental retardation is not a disease. You can’t acquire mental retardation from anyone. Mental retardation is also not a type of mental illness, like depression. There is no cure for mental retardation. However, most children with mental retardation can learn to do many things. It just takes them more time and effort than other children. A child with mental retardation can do well in school but is likely to need individualized help. Many children with mental retardation need help with adaptive skills.
Cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy describes a group of chronic disorders impairing control of movement that appear in the first few years of life and generally do not worsen over time. The disorders are caused by faulty development of or damage to motor areas in the brain that disrupts the brain’s ability to control movement and posture. Symptoms of cerebral palsy include difficulty with fine motor tasks (such as writing or using scissors), difficulty maintaining balance or walking, involuntary movements.
The symptoms differ from person to person and may change over time. Some people with cerebral palsy are also affected by other medical disorders, including seizures or mental impairment, but cerebral palsy does not always cause profound handicap. Early signs of cerebral palsy usually appear before three years of age. Infants with cerebral palsy are frequently slow to reach developmental milestones such as learning to roll over, sit, crawl, smile, or walk.
Cerebral palsy may be congenital or acquired after birth.
Visual impairment
Visual impairments encompass people who have never had any visual function, those who had normal vision for some years before becoming gradually or suddenly partially or totally blind, those with disabilities in addition to the visual loss, those with selective impairments of parts of the visual field, and those with a general degradation of acuity across the visual field.
A person who has visual acuity of 20/20 or less in the better eye even with correction (e.g. eyeglasses) or has a field of vision so narrow that its widest diameter subtends an angular distance no greater than 20 degrees is legally blind.
Hearing impairment
Deafness means a hearing impairment which is so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification, which adversely affects educational performance (IDEA). A person who is hard-of-hearing is one who, generally with the use of a hearing aid, has residual hearing sufficient to enable successful processing of linguistic information through audition. When fitted with hearing aids, most hearing-impaired patients report rapid hearing improvements. According to a study even though it takes time to get used to using hearing aids, people quickly feel that the hearing aids are helping them.
I am ashamed that they go through so much with such little support from people like us. But there are certain people, in our country, who have, with their compassion and their dedication, contributed to making these people’s lives much easier and more fulfilling.
There is a school known as the International School of Studies (ISS) which has a special grade for these special children where they are diligently taught and looked after with much affection. There was recently a science fair at the ISS where these children proudly displayed delightful cards and envelopes they had made themselves with recycled paper which they had recycled themselves. They had also made exquisite table mats.
The head of the Inclusive Education Department, Mrs Sabrina Najib, said that they were trying to inculcate amongst their students a love for beauty and an appreciation of art, while at the same time making them self-sufficient by teaching those crafts.
She further said that they were making an effort to include as many children as they safely could into the mainstream so that they could learn to interact with other children which would later help them interact with society as a whole. It is people like her and institutions like the ISS and Dar-ul-Sakun which make us proud to call ourselves human beings. We don’t feel very often like this considering the barbaric actions of those whom we call our fellow men.
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