Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts

Child development and Early intervention
Sunday, September 26, 2010

Most of the parents have concerns about their child development. Many of them often visit to paediatricians for regular physical and well being check-ups. In our countries due to the lack of awareness, many a time the development screening either does not complete or remains superficial. Moreover the paediatricians are busier in immunization or vaccination. Many a time they miss the developmental delay or forget to refer to early interventionist or developmental paediatrician for further evaluation.

Here as a parent, you should be aware of child’s development and behavioural growth so that you can share your concerns with the professionals and if there are issues then you can intervene earliest.

DEVELOPMENT

All children go through developmental “stages” in various developmental areas like motor, fine motor, cognition, speech and language etc – typical and predictable changes in the areas.

The next stage of development depends on the previous stage and hence they are interrelated.

Every child develops on his own pace.

DEVELOPMENTAL SCREENING

  • The checklist which guides the child development with respect to normal population. Experts have developed a list of developmental milestones in all development areas. Most of the time, it is conducted by psychologist, early interventionist or a developmental paediatrician.
  • Screening includes interactive session between parents and specialist. This may include a checklist or questionnaire about the family, prenatal, natal or antenatal history. The developmental history includes all developmental areas.
  • According to evaluations and results, recommendations are made for further services.

IMPORTANCE OF DEVELOPMENTAL SCREENING

To determine the healthy growth of the child and to monitor the child development.

To detect the developmental issues at earliest and intervene early.

CONTACT

Child’s paediatrician or EARLY INTERVENTIONIST or child psychologist can provide developmental screening.

Posted byNeeti at 11:09 AM 0 comments  

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TV the idiot box...
Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Most of the times parents of children with language or communication delay complaint or have concern about their children watching television for longer time. Recently a parent approached me and had a concern that child talked very less and whatever he talked was monotonus or like parrot talking. During assessment it was found that both the parents were on full time work and they left the child at home alone. A nanny took care of him and most of the time child was kept in front of cartoon channel and there was very less human communication with child.

Other child of 6 years was indulged in watching a DVD. She had almost memorize the whole DVD and she could repeat the whole DVD without mistake. most of the time, child was preoccupied with the self talking and it was all about the DVD content.

Researches have proven that excess TV watching is associated with delayed language development. Research on early brain development shows that babies and toddlers have a critical period for speech and communication development and that needs direct interactions with parents and other significant care givers for healthy brain growth and the development of appropriate social, emotional, and cognitive skills. Children who watched television alone were 8.47 times more likely to have language delay when compared to children who interacted with their caregivers during television viewing. As recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), children under the age of 2 should watch no television at all, and after age 2 watch no more than one to two hours of quality programming a day. Therefore, exposing such young children to television programs should be discouraged. Parents should engage children in more conversational activities to avoid television-related delays to their children language development, which could impair their intellectual performance.

Posted byNeeti at 10:01 PM 2 comments  

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Easy Flashcards
Friday, August 13, 2010


Recently i started designing flashcards and got an easy idea. Cut the cardboard of the desired size and put stickers. These stickers are easily available in markets and durable. They are mess free than the cut and paste books. They are attracting because of their colors.


Flashcards designs depends on various categories. They could be alphabets, numbers, vegetables and animals etc.

Posted byNeeti at 6:32 PM 0 comments  

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Early Intervention
Sunday, July 25, 2010


Early intervention is a program to identify & evaluate as early as possible those infants and toddlers (0-3years) whose healthy development are compromised and provide for appropriate intervention to improve child and family development.

Who is eligible for Early Intervention?

  1. If the child is not reaching age-appropriate milestones in one or more areas of development.
  2. Is diagnosed with a physical, emotional or cognitive condition that may result in a development delay.
  3. Is at risk for development delay due to various biological and/or environmental factors

Why intervene Early?

There are three primary reasons for intervening early with an exceptional child.

  1. To enhance the child’s development.
  2. To provide support and assistance to the family
  3. To maximize the child’s and family’s benefit to society.

Principles of Early Intervention

The primary goal of Early Intervention is to support families in promoting the child’s optimal development & to facilitate the child’s participation in family & community activities.

The focus of Early Intervention is to encourage the active participation of families in the therapeutic process by imbedding intervention strategies into family routines. It is the parents who provide the real early intervention by creatively adopting their child care methods to facilitate the development of the child, while balancing the needs of the rest of the facility.

Early intervention requires a collaborative relationship between families and providers with equal participation by all those involved in the process. An ongoing parent professional dialogue is needed to develop, implement, monitor and modify therapeutic activities.

Intervention must be linked to specific goals that are family-centered, functional & measurable. Intervention strategies should focus on facilitating social interaction, exploration & autonomy.

Family centered:

  1. Support parents in meeting their responsibilities to nurture
  2. enhance the children’s development.
  3. Intervention should be integrated into a comprehensive plan that encourages trandisciplinary activities & avoids unnecessary duplication of services. The plan should be built around family routines, with written home-activity programs to encourage family participation in therapeutic activities on daily basis.
  4. Intervention should be monitored periodically, to assure that the strategies implemented are successful in achieving outcomes.
  5. Children and their families in the early intervention system deserve to have services of the highest quality possible. High standards will be set for the training & credentiality of administrative & intervention staff training, supervision & technology will be focused to achieve excellence.

Posted byNeeti at 9:23 PM 0 comments  

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Education is not for all
Monday, July 5, 2010


Success school, “it is not our name but, it is our aim too”. The school in Hyderabad has recently asked a child to leave the school with in 3 days of admission. Moreover, the school administration has denied refunding the fees. The reason that school administration gave was that the child is mental and can’t cope the schooling.

The child who is in PPI has diagnosed with Autism. The parents have already discussed the issue with the school principal and Director. Inspite of knowing the school wanted to increase the strength and repetitive asked the parents to pay the fees earliest and block the seat for the child in school. The parents have paid the fees in April and secured the seat.

If somebody sees the prospectus it is designed with fake photos from google image and designed on international standards. In prospectus so many fake promises and commitments are done. But, on the other hand it is a small building with poor ventilated class rooms. No where, in the school prospectus, the actual standards of the school are mentioned. All 10-12 pages of prospectus are filled with fancy and promising words which actually don’t mean anything for any one.

Isn’t so sad? Where should those parents go? It is already a financial burden for a parent to bring up a child with disability and on the top if schools act like this, further add on the psychological distress. What about these schools that don’t even bother to implement the Laws and Policy.

Posted byNeeti at 10:33 PM 3 comments  

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Looking for adopting a slum/unpriviliged govt school
Sunday, February 7, 2010

Sakshum team recently thought to find ways to reach to a wider community and benefit it.


Our on going projects like Sponsor a child is going great and more and more children are benefited every year. However, this effort still can bring the difference to a few. So, we thought to invest the same amount in a way to maximize the benefits to the community.

One of the idea came was to adopt a small school which is either a slum school or a govt school with very less basic facilities. Sakshum will try to nurture such school and there by can impact and improve the life of more number of people.

For the same the very first step is the identify such school. We request you to suggest such school if you come across.

Please email me us at info@sakshum.com for the same

Posted byVivek kumar at 5:31 PM 3 comments  

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Learn to write...
Thursday, February 4, 2010


It has been seen that most of the children with developmental disability have some or other fine motor difficulties. The reason could be one or many of poor coordination between 2 brain hemispheres, poor eye hand coordination, poor muscle tone, poor dexterity skills and proximal stability. These children have poor grasp, hold and transfer activities in their early developmental period but later, his or her functional activities are effected which indirectly affects the academic progress. Poor hand functions leads to poor writing and copying skills which could be so severe, that some children withdraw themselves academically and socially.

Coordinated hand functions are important for ADL’s (activities of daily living). But sometime, especially in younger children, the importance of hand functions are missed which could be very difficult for care takers and children. Majority of caretakers have concerns of poor hand writing.

To improve the functions of hand, the child has to thoroughly assessed not only in hand functions like grip, hold and transfer but also to bilateral hand movements, tactile and Proprioceptive sensitivity, Visio-spatial ability, hand dominance, eye hand coordination, proximal and distal joints and their muscle functions and various functions of brain (laterality, focusing and centering).

The child can be prepared for hand writing by strengthening the muscles around distal and proximal joints, coordination exercises for brain and definitely lot of encouragement. Apart from exercises, the child should be taught to write on the sand, black board or on the wall for better understanding of strokes and movements or forming the letters. Later, he can be trained to write smaller on grids or on dots for spatial alignment. This should be done in graded fashion so that the child does adjust well. The child learns faster when writing is combined with auditory input like “up to down” is “one” and so on. Some times, the child has to assist with physical support or modifications like grippers or weights.

Physical activities concentrating on proximal stability and brain gym activities would be beneficial with other coordinated and strengthening exercises.
Both the parents and regular teachers should also understand the difficulties faced by the children. They should not burden the child with lots of activities and writing stuff so that the child gets frustrated and gives up. The teaching should be patient, playful and easy and graded for the child.

Posted byNeeti at 11:31 PM 0 comments  

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Project report "Eye Care, I Care" at Vijaya Bharthi High School
Tuesday, September 29, 2009




It was a milestone for Sakshum to screen 1000 children for vision problems under the project “Eye Care, I Care”.


On 19th September 2009, students of the Vijaya Bharthi High School, Hyderabad from X to IV were screened for vision problems. Out of 305 children who were screened, 20 were found having vision problems. The screened children were referred to LVPEI for further evaluation and treatment.


15 volunteers actively participated in the event. One group of volunteers educated the children about the importance of eye hygiene, nutritional diet, proper light and posture during studying and prevention of corneal injury. The other group of volunteers screened the children with vision problem with E chart. The teachers were trained for screening the new admissions and rest of the children. The teachers were also counselled for maintaining the proper lights and early detection of problems in students.


The teachers and volunteers found the event useful for prevention and cure of the vision problems in children. Thanks to all the volunteers, teachers and LVPEI.

Posted byNeeti at 10:54 PM 3 comments  

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Reading habits...
Thursday, August 20, 2009


To develop reading habits in children with special needs is always a concern for parents. Reading habits are very important for academics. Most of the special need children have poor visual function i.e. fixation, tracking, sorting, depth perception and discrimination. Many a time poor sitting tolerance and hyperactivity make the reading habit a daunting job for the educators and parents.

Tips for developing reading habits

  • If hyperactivity is diagnosed as a sensory issue, resolve it with guidance of Early interventionist or occupational therapist.
  • Work on developing the visual functions like sorting, matching, tracking and visual discrimination etc. this can be done with lots of visual cues and visual supports.
  • Most of autistic children are visual learner, so use this strength to develop reading and matching skills.
  • Read lots of story books, depending upon the age and child understanding level, the books can be selected. This not only creates the interest in child but also helps in improving further the visual memory. Repeat the story of the child favourite character and then keep on adding the new concept. For e.g. if the child likes “POOH”, create a story with some more pictures to teach the social skills and other functional activities.
  • Be patient as it may require lot of time and efforts. If you are patient the child tend to calm down easily and that further helps you and your objectives.
  • Bed time is best time for some children as they are calmer during that time.
  • Always remember every child learns with difference pace as every child is special 

Posted byNeeti at 3:32 PM 0 comments  

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