"My son's disability was no match for his determination."

My son was born with prolonged labour of forty hours.  He cried immediately and was able to feed. We came to know he had two true knots and the cord was around his neck. The mile stones were on time and even speech was developing at pace. We had no reasons to worry. What more does a young mother need with a family complete?  

A little later we found that his speech was not developing into sentences. The words were there but no progress. This sounded the alarm bells for us. Apart from this, well wishers, neighbors, and relations started asking why he wasn’t talking, And so started our visits to the doctors! When they said, “Nothing to worry…it will come. It looks like a delay,” we came home happy! All this was when my son was two and half years old. At three years of age it was time for school. The school wanted us to go for another review of tests—this was also was to our relief. At school we found he could do the writing and mathematics but verbally he was way, way behind his peers. So he repeated the class.

We started the next round of assessments as the school was very particular to get him tested again. NOW we found various doctors giving him a wide range of diagnosis—from mentally retarded to hearing loss, with strong advise to put him in special schools.

Way back in the late seventies and early eighties there weren’t many special schools and most of those were far below in the matters of hygiene. This made me advocate for regular schools. At that time I happened to meet a Reverend Sister who ran a school for children who are deaf and/or hard of hearing. She said, “It looks like he has Aphasia. That is a language problem…an inability for the brain to learn language.”

In the meantime my son started in a new school and he did extremely well there. Everything was fine till seventh standard. The school was very nice to him—they encouraged him in sports level, drama, etc and he was happy with friends. At this stage  he had problem learning new words and remembering them. We started giving him pictorial clues and he was able to recall well. We also got language exemption and and things started looking fine.

Even though his speech was not great he was able to manage to travel alone by bus, get his things done independently, etc. He had speech therapy for a short period. In my opinion it was a waste as they were interested only in the money and not his language development.

With the  language exemption in our bag that year, I thought we'd won the battle. I was happy that he didn’t have to struggle to learn a second language. My hope came crashing down when we went to get the exemption from the department of education.  Well, only when we applied for it did we come to know that it is time consuming and money had to be given at all stages to get the exemption. Not only that, we had to get the exmption every time he appeared for a public exam! In our country people try to make hay even out of someone else’s misery. I guess that is a different story for a different time.

 In this manner, my son finished school and then got into the university for his graduation course. He took visual communication and got through with flying colours. The three year course was like a roller coaster ride for him as well as for me. There were a lot of hiccups along the way like running around for the exemption, being ridiculed by his peers, not finding a good friend, plus the pressures of college life, etc. The list can go on and on.

We sailed the stormy oceans and one fine day he graduated and got into a job with one of the best companis in India.  For every silver cloud we had a dozens of black clouds. As we came out of one dark cloud we got into an even more frightening cloud. This is where we became aware of the unseen hand of the Lord almighty. Nothing would have been possible had I accepted defeat and sat back with my hands down. We struggled to swim against the tide and we reached where he is today. My son went on to study in the UK and is working there at present.:)

I asked for this narrative even though the writer's son doesn't have any mental health issues...to highlight the fact that any child with a disability can have periods of extreme stress because of how the community responds to his/he need. School officials and teachers should be aware of the needs of the specific disabilities and also the social/emotional needs of all the students. Many children develop coping skills and adapt to their learning needs; but having good friends and supportive peers go a long way in developing positive self image. Parents can look for various resources to supplement intevrention but where do children send most of their awakening hours? At school! Our schools have to address this need deliberately.