Children Facing Deficiency - A Personal Confession

source

I felt in these Easter days when we sometimes aim to be better, to make a confession to you. Recently (and not only) a number of challenges that children with deficiencies and those in their immediate environment face have drawn my attention on the Internet.

Among my special memories from a very young age are those with special children. My grandfather was a teacher at the Auxiliary School, which was in charge of special children. I still remember going to school from preschool - I would make a big fuss at home if my grandfather didn't take me with him and he felt somehow forced to do that. At school I attended classes - theoretically sitting on the bench like other children and practically being everywhere: in the closet, under the chair, eager to share pens and meet others ... more precisely I was making a big fuss and if you were wondering who was the child with deficiencies in the class, I think the best answer could always be ME. I never realized there was a difference between me and the kids in the class. I remember that one of the children seemed particularly nice to me, so I had a lot of fun when I had to share the pens and I was in front of him. The Auxiliary School was a dream place. The large corridors for my stature, the carpets that I think were dark cherry, the canteen, the hall - all in the light of the nice teachers and the ladies in the canteen who gave me a lot of chocolate. Well, when I left school, I still had a deficiency. An ice cream shop was a kind of twilight zone from which I could not easily leave without eating ice cream countless times. And how to better trick my grandfather to buy it for me if not making a big scene on the street and biting his hand so that we don't leave the area without much-desired ice cream. This was basically our daily circus. If I ask my grandfather, even now he can show me exactly (he says so at least and I can't contradict him) the place where I bit his hand then and the remaining signs.

Later, in primary school, I was lucky enough to have a special classmate - almost blind, but of great kindness, both he and his mother. The lenses of his glasses were solid and his eyes were a few millimeters close to the writing on the notebook so he could read. You can imagine that it was not an easy task to be fluent and not lose the line at the same time. I was always careful to point out if he was getting stuck and to read him from the board when the words of the teacher or other pedagogues were not enough. Some teachers even chew out on this. That didn't take much effort for me, I never felt like I was losing anything, on the contrary. I was glad to be able to help him and I even invited him on my birthday one of the years and it was nice that he came. I didn't think for a moment that his place wasn't in the same school as mine. However, it turned out that those in charge of the school had a different opinion. One day, his mother told me that he was clearly affected by the fact that the teachers did not want him to go to our school anymore and that he would recommend a special school. If you ask me, at least one of the teachers who seemed more affected by my colleague's lack of skills would have been more appropriate to leave school for several reasons.

My specialty in my first year of faculty brought me again around special children. I had a colleague who was already practicing there and I went too. Our role was to socialize with these children. Interaction with them was difficult this time. Their degree of damage was major. They became easily irascible and you could hardly enter their world. A girl with Down Syndrome hugged me many times and I felt I could give her back all those hugs. I tried to find a way to understand and see things further with the teachers there. I have been told that these children cannot be treated in the same way as normal children. I was young, effervescent, and perhaps naively optimistic, but I still had the feeling that they weren't ready either. Some readings and participation in courses with foreign trainers clarified my worries. However ... the dilemmas persisted and some of them may persist today ... how much do we condition and how much can be done differently ...? How special should we be to meet special requirements? Furthermore, would I have had the determination and patience to follow such a path? The answer inevitably came, NO. I think getting involved in anything (as a non-amateur) ultimately requires availability and a passion for it. This, unfortunately, is missing for some of the teachers who work with special children. However, I did not stop getting involved and explaining as much as I could when I saw the discrimination against children with disabilities right in front of me. It is very easy to discriminate against what you cannot understand. For me, being special doesn't mean having an IQ higher than 130, or not just that. Above all, it means being able to have understanding, kindness, empathy, and compassion toward others.