Counselling techniques to prepare parents of Retarded Children

Mental retardation in children is very painful and disheartening for parents. Presently, paediatricians put more focus on the retarded child and his family and observe that parents are not well prepared to deal with mentally retarded kids. Therefore, they recommend parents to get counselling from expert mental health counsellors to gain basic understanding of their role to face these problems.

Mental retardation has an adverse impact on learning. Mentally retarded child is intellectually incapable to grasp things around him and it slows down the academic learning process. Mentally retarded children need attention to manage daily activities and they have low IQ (Below 70) which disrupts their ability to cope up with society expectations.

Symptoms of mental retardation are visible in childhood. There are several causes of mental retardation such as Down Syndrome and foetal alcohol syndrome which put a child at greater risk of mental retardation. Certain drugs can adversely impact a child's mental growth that results in low IQ. Growth hampering during pregnancy can lead to mental retardation in a child. Severe illness or deadly infection may be the leading cause of intellectual disability in children

Mentally challenged children need proper counseling to enhance their living. It is observed that parents are puzzled about managing the symptoms of their mentally retarded children due to ignorance and they have to pay heavy price for their attitude in terms of degrading the health of their beloved child.

Though numerous counseling techniques are available and due to the inception of digital technology, parents can easily access therapists for their mentally disadvantaged child, still great efforts of parents count a lot. Blending expert's counseling with parental affectionate support will produce excellent results in the enhancement of mental health of mentally challenged children.

Parents are under stress after knowing shock, and sometimes refuse to accept the intellectual decline in their kids. Parents may undergo depression when doctors inform them of the mental syndrome of their child.

For treatment, good counselling for parents to handle their kids can be helpful for management of mental retardation. Parents normally set their standards about the mental disability of their child. Some parents perceive their mentally retarded child in a prejudiced manner uncooperative and fault-finding. Such negative emotional reactions may deepen the mental issue of a child. At the same time, counsellors are sympathetic, and interact with mentally disabled children without bias. Counsellor ‘s role is important to educate the parents to maintain good behavioral patterns and take care of the child to enhance their mental strength. Through using professional tactics, counsellors can motivate parents to envisage intellectual disability and offer good support to their child to overcome shortcomings.  Counsellors sometimes face problems of positive interaction with parents because parents hesitate to discuss the intellectual decline of their kid. Counsellors must develop strong bonding with parents so that they can be open to talk about the challenges of their intellectually weak child. The main objective of the counsellor is to comprehend the requirements of the disabled child and his parents.

In counselling sessions, professional counsellors must inform the parents about the poor intellectual level of the child and guide parents to learn tactics to handle the child to make a schedule to focus on the special needs of the child. Counsellors provide tips to enhance the living of intellectually deformities of a child through giving normal treatment in the family, avoid comparing with peer groups and spend time with child to meet the real needs of child. Positive attitude, gaining high self-confidence and acceptance of mental illness prove to be healthy traits to deal with intellectually disabled children.

In final thought, Parental counselling for mentally retarded children is a great challenge for counsellors. Changing a parent's attitude through effective counselling can be helpful to manage mentally retarded children. Counsellors deal with the dimension of parent-child interaction and dependence-independence. It has been observed that the majority of parents are profoundly concerned about the mental health of their children. Therefore they become overprotective which is disliked by the children. Counsellors cover a range of issues of the family of a retarded child and offer help to parents in coping with throbbing feelings about the child's mental state. Parental counselling is a significant service to help and foster mentally retarded children.

 Wrapping up:

It is a general consensus that counselling to parents of disabled children takes more effort and time but expert counsellors can smoothly manage the sessions and guide parents to deal with retarded kids. For good support to mentally retarded kids, clinicians mainly focus on teaching life skills, offer early interventions, and increase independence and autonomy whenever possible.

Important note: Above article is crafted on the basis of environmental input and reflect inner views of writer. Any resemblance is just a coincidence. Patients or parents must contact professional counsellor in case of severe mental syndromes. Writer is not responsible for any disagreement.