Being in the field of special education for several years, I have observed and worked with a number, maybe close to a hundred, children with varying diagnoses, conditions, severities, levels and/or disabilities. I remember I once had a student who goes to me for a one-on-one special ed tutorials in his school uniform. First time he did that, coming in his uniform, he was wearing his school ID. Of course, I had to look at his ID. When I did, I was shocked! Written at the back, along with persons to contact in case of emergency was disability: autism. Do they really need to do that? I think that was somewhat rude, to say the least.

Anyway, there have also been instances where the children were given diagnoses that don’t fit. There were those diagnosed as something but the behavior and symptoms sometimes just don’t add up to merit such a diagnosis. Well, recently, there was one student whose doctor was forthcoming in admitting she made a mistake in the diagnosis. The question is: Why is diagnosis important in helping these children with problems? Sometimes it feels that we are looking at these children according to their labels, waiting for symptoms to be manifested in their behavior disrupting their activities for daily living to confirm the diagnosis.

For us people working with these children with special needs, it is also helpful to know the diagnosis. Though there are no boxed solutions to answer the needs of these children, there are at least tried and tested behavior modification techniques and learning styles that can be applied to them. Though diagnosis may be the same for both children, say with the same age, still, there are differences between them that may merit different approaches to teaching techniques as well as managing their behavior.

To have a clearer view regarding this topic, read this article from the New York Times regarding diagnoses. Click here to read the article.

I am so sorry. The link doesn’t work when clicked. The page is asking for a membership/registration. I don’t know what happened and why it happened.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 12th, 2006 at 2:01 am and is filed under Being a (Special Ed) Teacher, special education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.