Children with special needs

Excerpts from the article "The special road to happiness" by Choo Kah Ying - Educator and freelance writer published in The Straits Times.

Generally people seem to think:

• Children with special needs are an encumbrance to their family and society.
• Such children are far too much of an inconvenience to impose upon anyone who is not biologically or legally obliged to care for them.
• Thus, no "good" man could be expected to forge a long-term relationship with a woman whose prospects of happiness are doomed by the existence of an autistic child.

If you take a moment to think about your own children with special needs, I hope you, too, will be awestruck by the incredible odds that your children have overcome to do the things that professionals told you they could never be expected to do. Moreover, their effort has, in turn, inspired you to transcend your limited perspective, resources and strength to do the best you can for them.

Yet, unfortunately, even when caregivers become enlightened about their children, they still have to parry the concerns of family and friends with their stereotypical conceptions of these children as burdens. Until e recognise that people with special needs are blessings who offer us the opportunity to rise above our flawed natures, we will never treat them with the respect that they deserve.

Can we be humble enough to see our interactions with "special" people as learning opportunities to better ourselves? Can we be open-minded enough to see the world through their eyes? Can we be gracious enough to extend our help without adopting a pose of superiority?

I hope that w can all rise to the occasion.

--Thanks to Choo Kah Ying for this wonderful insight on the children with special needs and it is no doubt an eye opener for everyone.

Teen Criminals

The following is an excerpt from the article published in The Straits Times this month by Serene Goh under the tile: All is not well with the family in Singapore.

FOR three days last week, The Straits Times ran articles on teen criminals. But for every story we write on arson, theft or even rape committed by teens, counsellors have dozens more that are even harder to hear.

These stories of heartbreak concern youths deemed 'Beyond Parental Control' (BPC). The label covers not only complaints lodged against youth under age 16 who aren't old enough to be juvenile offenders, but also describes the state of their caregivers, who have thrown up their hands in abject defeat

In February 1999, a Subordinate Courts research bulletin stated that about 200 BPC complaints were lodged at the Juvenile Court each year. Compare that to today's numbers: last year, 744 applications were filed. In 2008, it was 720 applications; and in 2007, 673.

Almost all cases involved children running away from home, an indication that they were deeply unhappy there. All this is occurring in an era we call the 'Information Age' - which, as it so happens, doesn't translate into enlightenment in matters of family life.

The spike in BPC complaints cannot be regarded as just an issue with 'young people nowadays'. It is every body's problem when the family nucleus in Singapore is at risk.

A short 20 years ago, getting into trouble was a lot more difficult because teens had aunts, uncles and cousins to keep them on the straight and narrow. They might have been unhappy, but running away was tough with grandma and grandpa 'hawk-eyeing' them. Nobody gave up on them easily.

But parents these days are weary from going it alone. Without a support network to help them raise a child who may be a handful, it has become a lot easier for them to lose parental control.
They already spend so much time making money to pay for enrichment courses, tuition sessions, co-curricular programmes, and so on.

They have little energy left to gain the attention of their children, who even when they are physically at home, are more connected to their many gaming kakis, or chat friends online, than they are to their parents. Children and parents no longer have to share a family phone, or television, or even computer.

Cash alone is no shortcut. Children need time, mentoring and a reliable network of adults they can count on.

It takes a village to raise a child, as the African saying goes, and they deserve one.
The question is: how can we give them what they deserve, before their stories make the news?

In a follow-up letter from Dr John Hui, he mentioned that "If parents fail to fulfil these deepest of needs, it is not surprising that many try to fill this void by 'looking for love in all the wrong places and faces'".

As a parent we should try to understand our children better by spending more quality time with them and try to fulfil their deepest needs. Giving them the pocket money alone doesn't mean that we have fulfilled our children's needs.

As mentioned by Lee Seck Kay in another letter to Straits Times, there is no doubt that parents must give what their children deserve - warmth, love, food, shelter, education and so on - not only because it is their moral obligation to do so but also because in their children they can perhaps see hope for the future, and their children making a difference to the country and even the world at large.

WAKE-UP CALL FOR TEENS

Is your teenager staying up too late at night to swat for exams or play computer games? Then shoo him/her off to bed earlier.

A new study has found that teens who make a habit of staying up past midnight risk of depression and suicidal thoughts.

The perfect bedtime is 10pm or earlier. The study found that teens who went to bed after midnight were 24 per cent more likely to be depressed and 20 per cent more likely to seriously contemplate suicide.

Even more important than an early bedtime is the total amount of sleep teens get. Compared with adolescents who reported eight hours of shut-eye each night, those who managed five hours or less were 71 per cent more likely to be depressed and 48 per cent more likely to consider suicide.

Columbia University psychotherapist James Gangwisch and colleagues determined these risks by analysing data collected from 15,659 teenagers as part of the National Longitudinal Study Of Adolescent Health. Overall, 7 per cent were depressed and 13 per cent had seriously contemplated suicide.

The findings were published in the Jan 1 issue of the journal Sleep.

Happy New Year 2010

My best wishes for all the parents out there a Very Happy New Year 2010.

Parents do undergo stress while bringing up their children and they in-turn pass on some of these stress to their children. Thus children have one more layer of stress around them and they look out for various way to overcome the stress. While doing so they sometimes fall into the hands of strangers who misguide them and try to mould them to their advantage. As a parent we need to try to reduce the stress of our children and by doing so reduce some of our stress also.

So in this new year 2010 let us try various ways to reduce stress and bring peace and happiness
to our environment.