By: Richa Sinha
LUCKNOW: When people hear the words special education, what do they think of? Children with severe disabilities who would not be able to benefit from a regular education system. What would happen if you had a child with special needs but he could not get the education that they needed to get through school? Just think about it.
Not everyone is able to handle the children with special needs and the teachers have to be specially trained.
The child needs to be accepted and loved, a necessary change from the social norm of rejection and isolation. Every success of the child should be celebrated and every accomplishment considered a step ahead for the future.
The child feels down because of the way society treats him. Let’s not hesitate in encouraging such children to get social, go out for dinner with them or a movie date, parents must accept them and bring them up like they were brought up. Shunning them from the regular life is the first punishment that the child has to go through.
No person’s merit (let alone a child’s) should be determined by the way his muscles move, how his brain works or whether he speaks in the way that people typically speak or looks the way people typically look. Every child is full of promises, let him continue to amaze the world.
Teaching a special needs child has changed my life. It has helped me understand that true love is meeting someone (child or adult, special needs or not) exactly where he or she is — no matter how they stack up against what “should be.” A special needs child shatters all the “should be’s” that we idolize and build our lives around, and puts something else at the core: love and understanding.
I may have it tough but in many ways I feel truly blessed and proud to be a special educator.
