Jan loves music very much and he liked the idea. After some time, however, I thought he had lost interest. One night, I awoke to tinkling sounds. It was Jan, poking at the keyboard and playing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.
The 7th Step
One somehow always took for granted that Jan knew things. He often seemed to know things he had not been taught.
Jan once managed to wriggle his way into the driver’s seat of the family car, a gleam in his eyes. My father had gone out to fetch something. The little hero had managed to settle himself and was already reaching for the belt buckle before we hauled him to the backseat.
One knew he could not drive for two reasons:
1) It would have been illegal.
2) We would not have let him.
Also, his feet could not reach the accelerator. Other than these points, if anyone had asked me then if I thought Jan would be able to manoeuvre the car out of the car park, I would have given a matter-of-fact yes.
I never realised how much I did not teach Jan until I became a preschool teacher. I also realised that Jan himself had never stopped making the effort to learn whenever he got the chance to. There, he taught me another lesson.
The 8th Step
The older generation grouse about how modern city children think that supermarkets lay eggs, that the little ones are afraid of living animals and have never seen a farm. Show a child a real live cow, tell him in an untactful way that milk comes from it, and he will probably refuse to drink it ever again.
Here is more unfortunate proof that I had not been as much of a teacher to Jan as I should have.
Jan has always loved eating chicken meat. When he was younger, however, his knowledge of the bird constituted seeing its cooked leg on a plate, preferably with some sort of sauce. I suppose he might have thought that chicken drumsticks have always existed that way.
The fateful day came when my mother decided, with great fanfare, to cook chicken rice at home. A couple of whole chickens were brought in, and after undergoing her secret processes of boiling stock and marinating and steaming, they were hooked on a rack over the kitchen sink to drip.
It so happens that the entrance to our kitchen directly faces the sink, and so on that day the lifeless, hanging chickens were the first sight to greet anyone walking in.
My brother had just finished breakfast and was happily making his way to the kitchen sink to wash his hands, when he balked at the doorway and stared. And stared. After a moment’s silence, he elicited a mighty yell and scrambled helter-skelter towards the safety of the bedrooms, greasy hands and all.
Little Jan thought he had seen monsters.
Nowadays, I am a great advocate for exposing preschoolers to the natural world.
The 9th Step
There are programmes in place to help special needs students find their niche here in Singapore, but it is not enough. There are long waiting lists, underpaid teachers, stranded children. Too many out there are being neglected, and it is ultimately up to the family to dig and scrape and hunt for places for their children.
In preschool, the younger special children are being left in the care of regular teachers who already have a class of up to twenty-five to manage.
Early Childhood teachers are overwhelmed and overtaxed. It is not that they love the special needs child in their class any less, but with twenty-four other children to see to, it is not an easy undertaking. A child who can, by himself, take up the attention that ten children demand will weigh heavily on any teacher’s shoulders.
There is also the matter of parental denial.
Some preschool teachers get frustrated with parents who refuse to acknowledge the fact that their child needs help. These parents make up stories about how the child behaves at home, give excuses about the child’s behaviour in school, and do everything to avoid clinical assessments because, somewhere inside, they dread listening to what the physicians will have to say. The child then does not get the help that he or she should be getting.
‘It is a cruel thing to do,’ someone once said.
“It” is the blotting out of the parents’ hopes and dreams for their child. A mother who has carried her child lovingly for nine months, then raised it with so much love and care, suddenly finds that everything she thought she knew about her child has been turned upside down. The family’s whole world is changed.
There is also the social impact. Accepting the disorder would mean they would have to deal with the stigma and having to answer to relatives and the world at large. The glare of the truth is too painful and blinding, and so they turn their eyes away. It would, perhaps, not be fair to blame them.
I certainly have no right to judge the choices these parents make, neither as a sister nor as a preschool professional. I do think, however, that my mother’s opinion should count for something. My parents accepted Jan for who he is.
‘What is more important to these parents?’ she said. ‘Their own emotions, or their child’s life and health?’
It is discouraging to know that even those who have accepted the fact have to struggle to find a place for their children here. There is a cry issuing from these people but it is a subdued one; it can hardly be heard over the hustle and bustle of the normal world. After some time, there is no one left with a voice to cry out, and folks quietly swallow the damage unto themselves.
Special education teachers too are taken for granted by most. Special education schools are scraping for manpower, resources, funds, even premises. Special education teachers are also not paid their true work’s worth.
Personally I think the teachers are worth their weight in gold. No
