Special Needs Or Special Child?

Let me begin by telling you where the idea for this article stems from. I am young woman with a licensed daycare facility in a small town. I have been caring for young children for over five years from my home and two years prior to that, in a larger-scale facility. I have recently started back to school to work on getting my Bachelor's degree. Since I am working toward an emphasis is Psychology, I have been taking several Psychology classes. Last week, in one of those classes, we started a brief discussion about children with Autism and other mental diseases. I felt privileged to share my experiences with a wonderful little boy that I have cared for, for the past eight years, who just happens to have a disease called Prader-Willi Syndrome. I would like to share these experiences with you.

For the privacy of the young man, I will call him Joe. I first met Joe at the very beginning of my childcare career. I was straight out of high-school and thought, like most graduates, that I knew everything. Joe quickly taught me that that was not the case. I had, what I thought, was a lot of childcare experience in lieu of a vocational childcare class I had been taking during my junior and senior years in high school. While I did learn a great deal from those classes, there is nothing that could have prepared me for little Joe. Ha! To call Joe, "little", now makes me laugh. Now, back to our initial introduction. I first met Joe when I began working at the daycare. Other than being very small, much like a premie, he looked fairly "normal". What is "normal", you might ask? Personally, I do not believe there is such a thing as "normal". The concept of "normalcy", I believe, is exactly that - merely a concept that is completely in the eye of the beholder.