Brandy's Mum Sharing

My daughter, Brandy, is 8 years old now. When she was 4 years old, kindergarten teachers commented that she is very active and not able to sit still in class, and thus, she could not learn attentively. In addition, she had bad temper and displayed her tantrum (i.e. throwing things) frequently. We were eager to look for solution or professional recommendation for her problems. We tried to search for information through internet and various websites but the results weren’t very satisfying. We either found information about overseas intervention programs or other irrelevant content from local websites. When Brandy was 6 years old, and we talked to our new neighbors on parenting issues, we found that the neighbor’s son was encountering similar problems as Brandy. But the son was receiving intervention to help in reducing his problems. They encouraged us to seek for help from A ZonEducare Advisory. Without hesitation, we made an appointment for consultation with the consulting psychologist in A Zon. After consultation, we decided to enroll Brandy in the intervention course.

It was a tough time for everyone during the initial sessions. Brandy threw tantrum easily and she wasn’t compliant with instructions. The instructors often took a longer time and greater effort to calm her during the sessions. After a few months of continuous intervention, Brandy has gradually settled down and was more cooperative. However, her functional skills such as body coordination, communication, and self-control ability were inadequate. Hence, we also cooperated with A Zon for the Home Support System and trained Brandy at home. The father even tailor-made a balancing beam so that we could train her body coordination and balancing at home.

A few months later, we noticed great improvement in Brandy’s body coordination; she could even ride a bicycle. In addition, she could listen and follow instructions; her self-control ability had improved. Temper tantrums in classes had been reduced as well. When she entered primary school (Standard 1), teachers encountered difficulty to handle her behavior due to lack of professional experience and inability to pay more attention to Brandy. We transferred her to another private school which specially caters to children with learning difficulties. Furthermore, we increased the intervention lesson in A Zon in order to improve her functional skills.

Brandy has been receiving intervention for about 2 years now. Her functional skills in several areas have improved compared to her previous performance. Besides her improvement in self-control and her temper, we noticed that her cognitive ability has also improved. She can now easily understand and accept rules as well as explanation. In terms of social interaction, her ability has improved as a result of her better self-control and communication skills. She is able to follow rules, being tolerant during play. As her attention improves, her learning ability shows improvement as well (e.g learning about concepts such as math, time, etc.). We are glad that she has shown such improvement. We know that she is late in receiving early intervention at the age of 6, but we will continue to provide her any help and support. We would like to thank A Zon and the school for their teaching and guidance.

Words for other parents...

I would like to share with other parents, not to procrastinate but to seek for professional help as soon as possible. People we interact with tend to console us not to worry too much as our child is still young. However, if we are ignorant and fail to detect the child’s difficulties at a young age, we might lose the window of opportunity for early intervention. Most importantly, parents have to face and accept the child’s difficulties. If our child has been diagnosed with learning or other developmental disorders, or our child has to go to a special school due to his or her difficulties, we have to accept the fact. Only if we can accept our child’s condition, then we would take action and seek for professional help. In this way, the child would benefit from getting the necessary help such as intervention and special school placement. I understand that some parents are afraid of stereotyping or discrimination from society. In fact, children with learning or developmental difficulties are not “abnormal”; they just need special treatment and more care and attention from us. In short, if parents are unwilling to take the initiative to seek for help, there is no one who can help our children.

Interviewee： Brandy's Mum on May 18, 2013