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Special Education

Notes parents realizes that their child is 'exceptional'. This event designates parents also as 'exceptional'.
Further, this status is extended to the entire family. The dynamic impact of stress is tremendous
which further encompass the parents individually, siblings and family. Many factors are detrimental
for positive and negative coping of a family with person with disability. The range of these detrimental
factors can be from individual resources of family members, couple relationship, couple relationship
with the family, family resources, community support and professional resources. The first major
stress that a family experience while facing the news from the professional that the new borne is
different i.e. 'exceptional'. Other variables affecting parental adjustment are individual differences in
resistance to stress, the extent and nature of the child's disability and the tolerance of the community
to that. Thurston, states that all parents experience emotional upset and anxiety when they learn
they have a handicapped child. Experts have predicted three probable stages for effective counseling
among parents. These involved the acceptance of the disability, the setting of long-range plans and
counseling parents about attitudes and feelings.
31.1.1 Parental Acceptance
Acceptance, which involves viewing the child with disability realistically and withdrawal of emotional
investment from the loss of a healthy child and attachment to the real child with person with disability,
is a crucial and important aspect, where each parent individually goes through the process of mourning
at his or her own space. Gives a detail description of various psychological models of parent's reaction.
Accepting and recognizing that the child is in some way different is a process called as "mourning"
and is similar to the experience of feelings after death of a close person or other major loss. Although
the process of mourning involved in adjusting (accepting) tend to be similar, not necessarily all
parents will follow similar course of grieving. Parental reactions to the emerging awareness of child's
problem differ. That mourning process is not necessarily completed, however the family with a child
with disability experiences a non-pathologic state of chronic sorrow. Family understanding and
acceptance serve as the deciding factors to success in school adjustment of children. A good family
encompasses a warm and easy husband-wife relationship. In order to promote parental
understanding, physicians, psychologists, therapists and teachers must show a warm compassionate
attitude toward the child. It is observed that the process of realistic acceptance of a child of a person
with disability is affected by factors like parental attributions of causes for disability, Nature of
disability, parent's personality makeup and the birth order of the child with disability.
The Mother Participates in a programme which is committed to avoiding disabled children from
being taken from their family home and community. Instead it aims to provide support for the family
while it adapts to having a disabled child at home; and principally, to take the family into consideration
during the rehabilitation of the disabled child
Trying to change the perception that disabled children are 'ill' and are trying to work towards a less
'medical' and more 'social' treatment of the problem.
For a poor country, with precarious health services, it is almost impossible to maintain such centres
in a good condition. But there is no doubt that the main problem is the way that families are torn
apart when a child is taken away at a very young age and placed in an institution. The emotional ties
that bind the members of the family are broken and the child grows up to become a linely adult,
without a family, until, at the age of 18, he or she returns home or is admitted to another institution,
this time for adults.

What is mourning?

31.1.2 Causes for disability
Whether the cause of the handicap is known or unknown contributes to variety of parental reactions.
If the cause is known and could not be prohibited by the parents for example some sort of brain
injury during birth, parents usually experience less guilt. When known cause is apparent by the

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