Parent concerns in the life skills development of trainable mentally handicapped adolescents
✍ Scribed by L. Wilgosh
- Publisher
- Springer US
- Year
- 1985
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 574 KB
- Volume
- 8
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0165-0653
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
There is a growing awareness of the importance of involving the parents in all stages of the educational process for their trainable mentally handicapped (TMH) children. In this context, in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 parents of TMH adolescents, to investigate concerns, hopes and fears for their children, particularly related to life skills development. Among the predominant themes were concerns that, while their children have shown significant improvement during their years of education, parents have received relatively little feedback from psychologists and teachers on assessment and educational progress, the children have not been educated to their fullest potential, and adult adjustment is, indeed, uncertain for the TMH individual.
The need for active involvement of parents in the education of trainable mentally handicapped** (TMH) individuals has received much attention recently. For example, Kelly (1973) emphasized that involving parents in school programs for the handicapped will facilitate alleviation of their child's problems. Also, Abramson (1979) noted that intervention efforts taking place only in the school often have little long-term effect, and that educators may be more effective working in partnership with parents.
Brolin and Kokaska (1979) have suggested that parents should be involved in shaping educational objectives for exceptional students, and should be made * Paper presented at the Eleventh International Round Table for the Advancement of Counselling, Aarhus, Denmark, August 1984. The research was funded by a grant to the author from a Support for the Advancement of Scholarship Fund of the university Faculty of Education. The research assistance of M. Bekkari and L. Kvemshagen is gratefully acknowledged. ** In the context of this study, the definition of the trainable mentally handicapped is that used by the relevant school systems as those students with an IQ of 30 to 50 plus or minus 5, or those whose level of functioning, as assessed by a school board placement team, is such that they will benefit from a trainable mentally handicapped program.