The Backward Child Needs Help and Understanding

Te Ao Hou, August 1957, Page 63

The Backward Child Needs Help and Understanding by Dr A. Fielding Parker, Auckland There exists amongst us a group of little people who although they may seem to conform in appearance to the ordinary pattern of their age group are nevertheless different. This difference to the average man and woman in the street may pass unnoticed, but to those who live with them it is something real, though in a sense intangible. Even their parents have not always noticed it at the beginning. The child will be slower to sit up, walk, and talk, but this may cause little concern. Mother may simply pass the remark “he is just slow, that is all.” But from this time onwards the retardate child begins to show more obvious traits. Especially is this marked when a new baby arrives more robust and lively than the last. As it grows it soon runs rings round its older brother or sister and displays much more rapid development. Problems arise early. The new infant easily upsets the older one whose physical responses are so much slower, more awkward, and whose understanding to meet a new situation is so limited. The slower child finds it more than usually difficult to accept mother's explanation about the new arrival. In spite of extra attention from a perplexed mother he may become increasingly sulky and spiteful, or simply indifferent, going his own way and making unnecessary work. Perhaps at this stage mother and father are not seriously concerned, thinking the strained situation will right itself eventually. But as time passes, the gap between him and the other child widens so much that the parents begin to fear that something is wrong with their child, without being sure. The child is now five years old. The parents are very worried, their patience exhausted. Their hope is now centred on the school and the sympathetic interest of the infant mistress. When the child first arrives at school the teacher may not notice anything very unusual about him, though he may seem more shy and aloof than one