Society, Special Parents & Special Education
What happens when we, as parents, deliver children requiring intensive care at birth? What happens when our children are later diagnosed and labelled as special? Does that mean we become special parents?
Initially we can’t believe it. We live a nightmare. We question ourselves incessantly about everything that came before special – to ourselves, to those around us, to the experts. We convince ourselves this must be temporary. A difficult birth. She’ll pull through. We expect answers to our questions about how to fix our child. To escape special. We just want to be ordinary parents - like other parents. We weren’t born to be special. Our child wasn’t meant to be special. This wasn’t meant to happen.
Like ordinary parents, we too have an innate sense of raising our children through our biology, our cultures, our values and our beliefs. We too become our child’s first and most-enduring teacher. But when we become special, we break – we are disrupted, we’re turned upside down – we shatter. And while all this is happening, we need to shoulder the same ordinary life tasks as ordinary parents - work, pay bills, keep a house, rear our other children, take care of our aging parents. AND we also need to pay additional bills related to our special child, and perhaps even ourselves. The additional pressures and challenges of caring, nurturing, raising and educating ourselves and our special child, are just too much. And yet we press on.
The dismal medical prognosis doesn’t help. Any glimmer of positivity is translated into parental wishful thinking. What kind of doctors are they anyway if they can’t fix my child? We make hearts from plastic – we cut out tumours – we can mutate genes. Heck, we can even clone ourselves. What’s the point of all our medical progress if it can’t fix my child? Why are they telling me to go home, learn to manage my child’s impairment, and get on with my life? What about my dreams for my child? For their success? For their citizenship?
As the medical machinery grinds on, education gives us hope. If doctors can’t fix my child’s body, maybe teachers can fix my child’s mind. They can see his strengths. Her interests. Their unique potential. To contribute to society as a citizen.
The developmental, educational and psychological assessments are complete. Why does my child need an individual curriculum plan? Why does she need to be taught in a special education unit? Why does he need a special school? Why is that a separate place? Separate people? Is the promise of learning alongside the ordinary children all a lie?
Definition of education: a purposeful activity between two people, acting as teacher and learner, towards presenting and attaining knowledge, skills and understanding, necessary for personal and social gains.