Children With Special Needs Don’t Need Compassion
Children with special needs do not need compassion, they need other attitudes towards them that surely anyone can give them: naturalness, affection and understanding. Nobody likes someone else to look at them with compassionate eyes.
A compassionate look can be given with all the good intentions in the world, but it can actually stigmatize and devalue the person in front of you. When they look at us with compassion for a physical defect, for a tough financial situation or for having made a mistake, we feel worse; we wonder what we have done so wrong to cause that pity.
The child and his family go through a myriad of stressful situations that can be less stressful if they perceive good quality social support around them, in which they feel protected and understood. We are going to describe some of the situations that these families and children go through in order to develop an empathetic and appropriate attitude towards them.
A difficult diagnosis
Each pregnancy in a woman is a world, but all mothers and fathers have the desire that things turn out as well as possible, that their future child has the best health to be able to face the demands of this increasingly demanding world.
Studies may appear that detect genetic problems in pregnancy, derived from teratogens and other studies that detect an incurable pathology in the fetus. The parents will act before this difficult situation and will decide whether or not to continue with that pregnancy; according to their own reflections and values that we are not going to stop describing here.
That is, for many mothers and fathers the diagnosis is already communicated in pregnancy. For others, this diagnosis will occur at birth and in other cases the child’s difficulties will not manifest until later. Be that as it may, it is a hard, complicated diagnosis that causes great emotional impact.
It is at this time of diagnosis when the woman alone or with her partner must assume that her motherhood will be different, neither better nor worse. .. and it is a fundamental moment for later coping. The information must be truthful, concise and be transmitted with delicacy and understanding.
Little by little, assuming the diagnosis, the parents will dedicate themselves to the work of their upbringing with all the strength and hope to be able to achieve the achievements that their child needs. Rehabilitation sessions, provide a good space for the child and a project based on love, which is what that child and any other needs.
A special child is with us
Children with special needs have a lot to teach us. They are champions who fight to be able to overcome very slowly all the difficulties they have and they do it almost without complaint, with a smile.
Sometimes his feelings are so intense that they make us shudder, but those around him have to give him an image of positivity, that they are with him helping him in his little daily challenge.
Children with special needs open their hearts to you and keep nothing for themselves. They are pure feeling in a body that may not respond to them. They are grateful, tremendously affectionate, they judge with the eyes of love and their silence is not uncomfortable. It is the silence of calm and his reflection that is also ours.
Many times they visit more hospitals and rehabilitation centers in a few months than we do in a lifetime. They don’t deserve a look of compassion because there is nothing to pity them about. They give us a lesson in struggle and life at all times. Pure and beautiful, incalculably healing.
Integration with equals and society
Depending on their problem, these children find it more or less difficult to adapt to their environment. Unfortunately, people who “a priori” do not have any intellectual disability, behave with them with a certain boredom, with compassionate glances and murmuring the pain and how terrible “that” must be.
They even dare with even more damaging comments: “Too bad he’s like this”, “This has happened to you and it’s not fair” or “Well, God knows why he does things.” The ignorance of certain types of people must come to hurt them.
These people must be separated from the life of the child and the parents, and ignored how they deserve. Most people are good, polite and respectful with these issues, so there is no reason to give it more importance than it is.
People who love you just need you to deal with the situation naturally, as a developmental and medical problem that can be addressed, with the best professionals and with people who love to see you smile like nothing else in your life.
We must fight for their integration in parks, in schools or to eliminate architectural barriers. Because a little justice, good professionals and a circle full of love around the child can work the miracle: See him happy most of the day.
His family, colleagues, professionals and friends do not ask for more, because if you see your son happy whatever his circumstance … Is there something that matters more?
Image courtesy of Analía Heredia
