Should a mentally disabled child be treated any different than one who has no mental handicap? (Survey for class...please respond! Thank you!)
no. i work with disabled children (autistic), and i can tell you: those children whose parents treat them as they would any other child have much more self sufficient children. i realize it's got to be very difficult not to do it, but spoiling them does them no good at all.
I've babysat an autistic boy close to my age acutally...and his mother treats him like the king of the world.. and treats him like he's 100% mentally handicapped...whereas his father treats him like any other child and doesn't give him "special privelages or leeways" just because of his disablility... What brought this topic on (I was able to choose what I wished to do my essay on) is that woman....Maybe it's just a select few that treat their children like that? Thank you for your input! I appreciate it.
I think it's something really, really difficult not to do. I think parents should try not to do it, but I can understand why they do.
The key is to be extra patient, not extra tolerable. You have to teach them right from wrong, as hard as it may be. I can understand how a parent would easliy spoil a disabled child. But part of being a parent is teaching what behaiviors are accecptable and which ones are not. i think many, many families with a disabled child give them special treatment, or spoil them, but never intend to.
Well I hope that none of you ever has to find out what it is like to have a mentally disabled child, before you judge parents of disabled children please consider the daily battles we face in a society which makes few allowances for us and our children. Parents of an autistic child may well have been without a full nights sleep for many years, and perhaps are not parenting to the standard they would intially have hoped to be. To answer your initial question, you are going to have to treat a child who has understanding difficulties in a different way to someone who doesn't have these problems. And there are so may sensory problems with being autistic that things that everyone else takes forgranted like for example going to a supermarket take on the nature of a jungle expedition. However, I would agree that "spoiling" a handicapped child isn't going to help them one little bit, as a cute handicapped child who can get away with anything can unfortunately develop into a not so cute adolescent with few independance skills. To finish as I have to go and look after my disabled child, looking after a child with these difficulties as a baby sitter is different to living with them day to day. I think it's brilliant shoelaceknots that you are helping out this family, I know that it would be better for the mother to treat her son less like a little prince, but have a think about how you would feel if this was your child, it is not an easy path to tread.
i'm sorry if i offended you, moominmama. i watch our parents every day and i see how difficult it is and how heartbroken so many of them are. i think it is better to avoid spoiling them, but i also understand how difficult it must be not to. i don't know how i would do, in the same situation.
Awww no I am not offended celtgrrl this is just one of the few subjects that this otherwise mellow Moomin comes on strong about I suspect that very few parents of autistic children have enough spare time to be posting on forums, so I'm leaping in there with knobs on so to speak. The fact is that it isn't good for any children to be spoiled, regardless of disability.
