SPECIAL CHILD SCORES 4As

ON the morning of Nov 19 we were nervous wrecks.

Mixed feelings and thoughts filled our minds, waiting for the UPSR results.

Finally, when it was announced my second daughter achieved 4A’s and 1B, a sense of relief and proud achievement for us as parents.

For her to achieve such a feat was a tremendous achievement in itself.

When our daughter was three years old, we notice there was something different about her.

She has never uttered a proper comprehensible word, was quiet, reserved and demonstrated slower reflexes than others.

Compared to her sister and cousins, she would be the odd one out. At times engrossed in her own world, we could sense part of her emotional disconnection to those around her.

If she wanted certain things, toys or food, most of the time she would be practically holding and guiding her parents’ hands rather than mentioning or taking it by herself.

As concerned parents, we took her for various specialist tests, including a physical ENT review, and reports suggested a speech deficiency problem with a probable case of a mild form autism.

The experts even suggested we consider enrolling her in a government special school rather than a normal primary school.

However, we were resolved and determined to help her at all costs, not to prove her critics wrong but mainly to fulfill our responsibilities as parents of a ‘special’ child.

We started to develop her motor speech capabilities during her third year. Various speech therapies, countless hours over weekends and working days were spent over the years. We even chauffeured a recommended elderly therapist from PJ to Shah Alam.

We explored pre-schools providing certain motor and human skills development until her fifth year.

We even bought knitting toys to strengthen and improve her mind and physical coordination. To excite her creative side, we even enrolled her into art classes and piano lessons.

When she was six, we started to concentrate on her phonics skills, enrolled her into a preschool specialising in reading skills, to prepare her for the next stage, primary school.

We ensured reading milestones were met, both in Bahasa and English. Against the early suggestion, we registered her into the nearby normal primary school.

Along the way, we also taught and guided her to read the Quran. It was very slow and frustrating in the beginning.

We kept our expectations low during her early primary years. To give her an ‘academic handicap’, we even had to justify and explain her history to the teachers at times.

Later we realised this was a mistake and we avoided such ‘handicap-reasonings’ from our parent-teacher discussions and just let teachers treat her on equal footing with the rest of her friends.

Over time, we could see our daughter’s positive progression in the academic subjects, co-curricular activities and even her circle of friends grew.

We really felt the emotional side of hers had ‘come out’ and we could connect. This was also evident when she was appointed as a school librarian and also deputy class monitor.

During the last two years of parent-teacher discussions, we somehow felt vindicated when positive remarks were given by teachers that saw her as being a normal student, performing even better than her normal contemporaries.

For that, we are forever grateful to all her teachers, therapists, relatives and friends who we came into contact and gave us support.

To all parents who can relate to the experience or even more difficult instances, we pray you persevere and never lose hope in your ‘special’ child.

Your sacrifices, hardwork and effort will eventually be rewarded, however small, in the end. Insya Allah.

DET & SUZI
Proud parents, Shah Alam