Special children may have mild learning disabilities, mental retardation, food allergies, illnesses, occasional panic attacks or serious psychiatric problems but they can be treated at some level if serious efforts are made.
"My daughter is 10 years old. She understands everything but cannot speak properly, even after five years of schooling I didn't feel any improvement in her speech," said Humaira Bano, a distressed mother during a visit to a local private special education school, here on Friday.
Government special schools were less in number and then their standard of education was very poor. Whereas private schools do provide better facilities than government but they also have weaknesses. Private schools appoint inexperienced teachers who gain experience during their jobs but during that period a child losses specific time of learning something, which he might not learn or grasp later because of his brain's slow growth, she said.
Most parents themselves were unaware of such realities and they didn't know how to size up the matter that's why their children did not improve. One main reason was the time frame in the life of a special child, but inexperience teachers waste a lot of time in understanding themselves what such behaviour of the child meant or how to tackle it etc. This might not affect a teacher but it did affect lives of special children, she said.
Special institutions must have some experienced speech therapist, as the special children need to improve their speaking skills, which a diploma holder cannot do properly. Speech therapist or doctors should be there who can help these children in a better way.
One more problem is becoming independent in society, first of all public's attitude is miserable they don't give them equal status as they deserve but feel sorry for these children and even for their parents. Secondly, they don't have enough job opportunities. Government has a quota for special people in jobs but you would not see much people working neither in government departments nor in private organisations. The distressed mother demanded of the government to establish more educational institutions and create job opportunities for special children.