Raising a Differently Abled Child
“I think as parents, whatever you may see a therapist does or doesn't do, finally it's like you need to do 200 percent for this child,” Boaz said. “Because everyone else is paid to do stuff for your child, but you just have to work that much harder.”
Boaz said that the biggest thing about raising a differently abled child is that the parents need to work doubly hard.
A lot of parents just want a quick fix or a cure of some sort because they get overwhelmed or discouraged when they find out they need to work twice as hard throughout their life for this child, according to Boaz.
Home environment is important
Anand conducts workshops for the parents of differently abled children once every three months. She said that it’s important that the child sees the parents spend time together.
“The intimacy, you know,” Anand said. “The child should see all that. Child should see that the parents are in love so that that love shows on to the kid. We always say that if the parents are going to be very sad, it shows up on the kid. The kid also react the same way. The kid is not happy.”
Sathya Anand
In India, parents seldom even have a cup of coffee together in the morning, according to Anand. She gives many handouts to parents about how they should act in front of their child. The child also needs to grow in a happy home environment where the parents constantly encourage them.
“A lot depends on the parents,” she said. “I would say it's all 50-50.”
Be wary of your attitude
Out of 100 kids that Anand has seen, she says about 75 percent of their parents nowadays are proud of their children. They’re not ashamed that their child is differently abled, even though they do have fears for their future.
Anand said she reassures the parents whenever they express fears that they should focus on the present and work on the child, that they should take this journey day by day.
The attitude shown toward the child is very important when raising them.
Sriram explained that depending on how the child’s parents react when the child is beginning to understand their disability, the child might learn to use it to manipulate others into giving them what they want on the sole grounds that the they are differently abled.
“It all depends on the response they get from the environment, basically,” she said.
What you need to know if your child with a disability is starting school soon (The Conversation)
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Parent’s role in early intervention
When Anbumani starts early intervention with children and notices developmental delays like the child not smiling like other children do, the parents play a huge role.
“We'll tell the parents always move close to the face and smile, talk to him face to face, go to the child's level and do everything, all those small small strategies we'll use,” she explained.
The result is that eventually the child starts to smile, just by seeing the parents smile at them at eye level whenever they are interacting together.
Using the Internet
Initially, when Boaz first found out Samuel has Asperger’s, the internet didn’t have much information about it. So she went to a special institute and completed a course to help her learn how to raise her son.
“At that time I was facing learning difficulty, so I did a course on that,” she said. “And yes that really helped me. Because I interacted with a lot of kids with special needs. Thanks to the course, I interacted with them, and it also helped me as an educationist in my own school to identify kids with special needs and in tackling with the challenges faced by my child and by me.”
But today, the web is a brimming vessel of infinite information. It is the age of the internet, of course. Parents often turn to the internet first when they find out their child is or may be differently abled. This may not always be a good thing though.
Boaz said that the internet is risky because parents often come across ads for sophisticated-looking centers looking to scam the parents out of their money in exchange for a “cure” for their child. The scammers prey on the insecurities of the parent and get away with it because the parents don’t want to go public with it.
Pros and cons
Parents and special educators alike use the internet as a valuable resource bank, according to Sriram. Parents also have the opportunity to gain a better understanding of their child’s disability thanks to the wealth of information on there.
Kannan recommends the web as a resource for parents. She herself uses the internet to connect with parents of the children in her school through a Facebook page and website for D.K.’s Learning Centre.
“I upload all the materials and I also keep updating whatever new methodology that has come up, or whatever the difficulty we faced, and the teaching methods,” Kannan said. “So lot of things I share, through which a lot of people are really benefited by.”
However, the amount of information on the internet is a double-edged sword. On one hand, parents can understand what their child is going through better and how to help them. On the other hand, they can read so much that it can lead to confusion, according to Anbumani.
When it comes to differently abled children, each one is different. One child’s autism is never the same as another child’s autism. What works for one child may not always work for every other child. However, parents can read about someone else’s experiences with raising a differently abled child and think their child will turn out the same way.
“I have seen at least two to three of my parents read the internet and then they have gone into literally depression,” Anbumani said. “Because they will read the good things also, bad - even though the child may not have those features, these parents will read all those things and they are like, ‘Oh, my child will, may, become like that. They may not be able to do such things.’ And they will go into depression.”
Mothers of Autistic Children and Depression (VeryWell Health)
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This is a huge problem because Anbumani points out that the parents won’t be able to take care of their child then. The parents start to wonder what the use is of sending their child to therapy or school, wonder why they are spending so much money, or why they are even bothering to work so hard.
So when parents ask Anbumani for help, she never recommends they go do their own research on the internet. Instead, she finds good websites herself and recommends them to the parents.
How Mihir Alexander Samuel feels about himself
“In his mind, he's normal,” Boaz said. “So he doesn't like to really touch on the fact that he has special needs. But then, he is aware that he has special needs.”
Samuel also understands that he has a disability, and he’s aware of his limitations, but he doesn’t let himself be bound by those limitations, according to Boaz.
“He wants to push himself out of it, in his own way, in his own time,” Boaz said.
Samuel overcomes a limitation only when he sets his mind to it. Only then does he work hard with determination. When he was choosing what classes he should take with NIOS, he chose painting as one of them. Boaz said this was because Samuel didn’t want the handicap of being unable to draw.
Boaz also narrated a story of how Samuel learned cursive writing out of sheer anger at a rather rude lady at the passport renewal office.
