On my rural placement i have been helping out with development groups for kids of kindy and pre-primary age. The kids generally dont have a specific diagnosis apart from being developmentally delayed. The groups consist of doing fun activities which help to build muscle strength, improve balance, improve motor planning, improve fine motor skills and reach gross motor developmental milestones.
Generally the kids are referred by their teachers because they are either struggling with schoolwork or are having problems developmentally or socially. A lot of the time it seems that the kids dont have much wrong with them, however it still would be hard for them to fit in at school. I feel sorry for the kids because i know how hard it is to fit in at school even when you can do everything that the other kids can do. I can only imagine how hard it is to fit in when there are certain things that you cant do but everyone else can do. The other thing thats sad about the situation is that a lot of the time the parents are to blame for the kids being developmentally delayed. Whether its because of abuse, neglect or whatever, unfortunately a lot of the kids i've worked with have fallen into this category.
Recently there was a situation where after working with one of the kids their parent came in to pick them up and seemed quite annoyed. I was pretty sure the parent wasnt annoyed at me but still i felt sorry for the kid that now had to put up with a parent in a bad mood. I had really enjoyed working with this kid and i felt that the child was responding well to being part of the development groups. The parent just grabbed their kid and then left straight away without checking with us how there kid was going. I know the parent must have a lot of things going on that would be occupying their mind but i really felt the parent should take more of an interest in their kid. I felt like saying something to the parent but i knew it wasn't my place to. I talked to my supervisor about it and they said unfortunately we can't tell a parent to take more of an interest in their kid.
I thought about the situation a bit more and even though i think i made the right decision not to say anything to the parent i was annoyed that it was the poor kid that was going to suffer developmentally. Has anyone else experienced a similar situation? Has anyone found a way to get through to parents who maybe arent doing their job as good as they should be?
1 comment:
hi there, yeah i've seen something like that recently while being on international placement. there is a boy in ICU who has CP, and had very poor management when he was a child. this is directly due to his parents, who did not seek treatment for him until he was about 14. as a consequence, he has really really bad contractures of both his upper and lower limbs. its a terrible thing to see because you can tell by looking at him that if his parents had cared more, he could be sooooo much better. so i feel your pain, there really is nothing that we can do.
Post a Comment