I have a son with special needs and I understand how parents with special needs are going through.
Children with special needs did not choose to be special needs and we should accept them as they are.
There can be true friendship developed when we understand them better especially they are really simple people that we can trust.
Below is a great videoclip based on a true story of how a boy developed a wonderful friendship with child with autism.
In the story, the special needs child, Tam, was seated with Hidayat as buddy to take care of one another.
In the beginning Hidayat was surprised by Tam’s weird actions but he slowly understood him and developed a special friendship.
True friendship should be unconditional without requirements. When Hidayat started to understand Tam, he was willing to be with him and they had a wonderful time together.
When Tam got into trouble due to examination stress, Hidayat took the courage to share with his teacher about his thoughts and concerns as he was afraid that Tam’s mum may discipline Tam at home.
Uniqueness
Everyone is different in some ways and we cannot expect anyone to be the same.
Children with autism may also have different spectrum and we cannot expect two autistic children to behave the same way.
They must be treated as human with uniqueness that we need to understand and learn.
No one chooses to be special needs and it is really not their choice.
Acceptance of their uniqueness rather than treating them as weird should be our attitude toward them.
Emotion
Everyone has our own emotions but we can control our emotions better.
In the world of a child with autism, he is a simple person and may exhibit his emotion freely.
Looking at the positive side, people with autism often are very honest people who differentiate the right and wrong very clearly.
They are not like some who may appear to be friendly but they complain and bad-mouth behind others.
Their simplicity of their emotions and how an autistic child treats us are genuine without hidden agenda.
Very often, we can trust what they say more than the others who are supposedly normal.
Learn
Everyone can learn but we may learn best in certain way. A learning style may work for one but it may not work for another.
Children with special needs often need individual learning plan. They can definitely learn but they learn in different ways since everyone is different.
Teachers, who teach students with special needs, require lots of patience since they may not always do what we say and they may also understand differently from what we teach.
They may not understand emotions of others very well too so the severe ones may not even know that we are angry with their bad behaviours when we start to scold them.
Instructions and routines must be clear and simple. Changes must be indicated clearly so that they may not feel the stress resulting in disruptive behaviours due to insecurity.
In conclusion
From the videoclip based on a true story, we can see that true friendship can be established with special needs when we start to understand them.
We often may misunderstand them and lack the patience to understand them but when we know them better, they can be the true friend that stays with us even during challenging times.
With the inclusive education of special needs to the mainstream classroom, teachers must enrich ourselves with new knowledge to provide an enriching learning experience for every child including children with special needs.
Every child can learn but not every child learns the same way.
