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Impact of Disabilities in Learning among Children.
Physical Disabilities
This is a condition in which some aspects of a human body are not functioning physically. It normally affects mobility, dexterity, and the stamina of the patient. It limits various facets in the life of the patient, including things like breathing and the movement of the individual. They have the potential of causing other conditions such as blindness, epilepsy, and even sleeping disorders, especially to young children. There are various causes of these physical disorders.
The cause of disability in children depends on the period in which the child contracted it. Those who are before birth, known as prenatal disabilities, may be due to accidents that occurred during embryonic and fetal developments. Others may be due to genetic disorder or those who have been inherited from the parents. The second age is perinatal, which often occur a few weeks after birth. This may happen due to damages caused to the body during birth, such as prolonged lack of oxygen, therefore, causing respiratory damage (Prasher & Matthew, 2018, pp137). Those gained at the course of growth are mainly due to accidents, infections, diseases, and health disorders such as obesity.
These conditions affect the child’s learning ability in various ways, according to how they develop. They can, therefore, be progressive, stable, visible, invisible, fluctuating, or intermittent. During these stages, the child becomes uneasy and experience many difficulties which distort the learning environment. They are unable to freely associate with others as it may affect their vibrancy and make them slow. The progressive disorders, for example, are characterized by multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and chronic arthritis. The non-progressive ones can either be stable or non-stable. The stable ones are characterized by cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury, and Spina Bifida. They, therefore, make the child fatigued every time, with low interest and thus the curiosity of learning if affected.
Mental Disorders
Mental disorder is a term that is used to refer to illnesses that affect the activity of the brain and the mind. People with these conditions experience difficulty in maintaining some level of concentration, and cannot manage some aspect like stress. They often affect how an individual thinks and perceive things, especially those about their personality. They have a high tendency of getting depressed, having anxiety, and symptoms of schizophrenia.
Among children, their manifestation is indicated by how the child feels, behaves, and perceives things around them. Determining the disabilities, therefore, becomes sometimes difficult unless a psychiatrist is consulted (Perlin, 2017, pp23). They affect particular regions of the brain by altering the normal functioning of the areas. It is therefore very important to observe the actions of the child and gauge if they are functioning normally.
Mental disorder is categorized into six major types, with each affecting the child’s learning abilities differently. The first one deals with mood disorders. Under mood disorders, the child becomes gloomy most of the times with prolonged sadness and therefore inhibiting the capacity to interact even with the teachers. The second one is anxiety disorders, which include phobias and panic disorders. It makes the child feel insecure and therefore, in school, for example, may shun other students and always live in fear. The third one is an eating disorder, which takes different shapes. The child may eat less or eat excessively, therefore, affecting the immunity, which again affects the learning speed of the child by making it slow.
The fourth characteristic includes organic brain disorders, which are caused by diseases and injuries. It may affect the rate at which the child internalize concepts and ideas. The fifth one is called schizophrenia, which is an advanced form of mental illness, and the learning of the child is inhibited. The last one is personality disorders, where the child has a hard time getting along with others and often may become violent or show some signs of extreme introversion.
Intellectual Disabilities
People with this type of disability often have a problem in the skills needed to live normally, work, and be productive in the community as others. They have imitations towards daily living skills, social skills, communication, self-direction, and safety. It is commonly characterized into syndromic and non-syndromic intellectual ability. Syndromic is associated with medical and behavioral signs that are present while non-syndromic are associated with other disorders.
Intellectual disabilities among children can be due to inheritance from the parents or due to genetic defects. Things like accidents, mutations, and diseases are the major causes of this condition. There may be deficiencies in the health of the child, for example, deficiency of iodine, which may cause these disorder as a result of the body lacking minerals required for its normal functioning. Malnutrition also affects the immunity of the body, which in turn affects the intellectual performance of the child. This would, therefore, put the child in the risk of developing intellectual disabilities.
In the determination of intellectual disability of children, three factors are considered. The first one is the limitations that one has in mental abilities, and this limitation must be significant (Kaufman, 2018, pp63). The second factor is that there must be a limitation in the adaptive behavior of the child in different environments. These environments include communication, interpersonal skills, and self-help skills. The last determiner is that they should be evident mostly in childhood and at adolescence. The major effect on the learning of the child is that it tends to lower the IQ below 70, making the learning of the child difficult since they become slow to learn.
Work Cited
Kaufman, Alan S. Contemporary intellectual assessment: Theories, tests, and issues. Guilford Publications, 2018, pp. 35-78.
Perlin, Michael L., Heather Ellis Cucolo, and Alison Lynch. Mental disability law: Cases and materials. Carolina Academic Press, 2017, pp. 19-36.
Prasher, Vee P., and Matthew P. Janicki, eds. Physical Health of Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. Springer, 2018, pp. 126- 190.