Advocating for my child with PDD...

People are more accepting of children with physical disabilities. Is it much harder for children who look to be developing typically but have subtler needs ?

Yes, because physical disabilities can be seen but the internal difficulties of a typically growing child is not seen. For eg, my son has mild PDD and looks absolutely normal. But he has internal deficits which are not seen by people.  Moreover people are not that aware of autism, PDD, etc. They don’t know what exactly the disorder is, and to what extent it can manifest itself in an individual or affect his day to day functioning.

When people find something odd in my son’s behaviour externally they label it as “mad.” They don’t try to find out what exactly is the problem. They don’t feel the necessity to know about it because it is not their child who is affected. As a result my child has to face a lot of mockery and humiliation by others. No one deserves this type of treatment. My son is teased by other children in his van on most days.

As a parent I have informed his school about his problem and the school is treating him like any other child. This is very good on their part but they do not adapt to his problems. They expect him  to complete his school work like any other kid in his class; even in exams his answer sheets are corrected like that of any other child in his class. I personally feel that my son is not given a fair chance when it comes to academics. He needs to be given extra time to complete his H.W and he needs to be given a question sheet which is a simpler version. My child’s brain makes it difficult for him to process information in the same manner as his classmates. He doesn’t understand tricky questions. He can’t make inferences (read between lines). Even in class sometimes he is unable to follow the teacher's instructions about projects, etc. He says he couldn’t understand what the teacher wanted him to do. Most of the times, I call up his friends and check with them what needs to be done. If other kids in his class take 1 hour to complete the H.W my child needs 2 to 3 hours to complete the same workload. It will be very difficult to manage with the time at our disposal, especially as he moves up to higher classes. Even now he hardly gets any time to play and study. His after school time is spent in completing just his H.W.

My son needs some help from all concerned—it can a make a huge positive difference in his development. He needs to be praised for every small effort that he makes in his school work. It will boost his self confidence and improve his performance. But most of his teachers don’t give him “good” or “very good” in his worksheets nor give extra deserving marks in-spite of his good performance. They do not understand or recognize that his effort is a little bit different from the effort of his classmates. He is good in academics as of now. As parents we don’t expect him to be excellent in his academics and neither do we pressurise him in that direction. I am happy with his performance. I go over each and every lesson taught in school and I put my best effort while helping him with his studies at home. In higher classes the studies will be more demanding; we need to put in more effort; and we need to have more time. How will we manage all this in future is a big question? He is studying in I.C.S.E syllabus.

Each and every performance that he is giving is the result of sincere hard work put by him and his family members. He deserves more appreciation from all concerned but he is not getting his due. Inspite of his needs, he performs well in a class of 40 NT students.  Isn’t that outstanding?

 Even in therapies I've experienced therapists saying that my son’s problem is very mild and doesn’t require much attention, and that they have severe cases to handle. My question to the society is where should such children go for help, that too a small help? It can make a big difference in their lives!

I am a mother who is not a professional—I have my own limitations. I don’t know how to teach him in a structured way. I need to be trained on it by some expert in the field and need guidance periodically, in every possible way.

Our society needs to give children like my son the required time and space to grow. Our children also need a loving, positive, and encouraging environment so that they can blossom into wonderful individuals.

The writer is the mother of a young child with PDD. Understanding figurative language is a big challenge for children with this diagnosis.  Children with language needs face one other challenge in countries like India—that of bilingualism. Not only do these children have to learn abstract language skills in one language, they have to work harder because the medium of instruction is different from their mother tongue. The variations in the language structure (between English and the mother tongue) is a lot harder to understand and our schools are not best equipped to teach by linking the known to the unknown.