Must All Autistic Children Go to Mainstream School?

Bengaluru: Third Eye -Autism centre and functional school for autism, recently held a seminar on ‘My Autistic Child’s Readiness for Mainstream Schooling’. Leading developmental paediatrician Dr Ra Poo Ezhilmangai and Director of Third Eye, Saranya Rengaraj, autism specialist, were present at the event and spoke to parents of autistic children about how and when they should send their kids to mainstream school.

Dr Ezhilmangai made a detailed presentation on the skills that should be manifest when a child is ready to go to mainstream school. There are times when parents think that sending kids to school is the only way to make them learn social skills. But, as they go to higher classes, there are hardly any free sessions where a child can communicate with other kids and play with them as the focus is more on academics. There are always several other ways—sending them to an extracurricular activities camp, or a play group where they can learn the skills.

Integration into Mainstream

The seminar dwelt on the skills required for a child’s integration into mainstream schooling. A lot of times, autistic kids—or kids with special needs—are forced to attend mainstream schools without developing the behaviours needed for such integration. This creates a lot of stress among the kids and they end up displaying even more challenging behaviours.

“These kids get even more stressed in keeping pace with mainstream kids and competing with them—even as they face difficulties in just carrying out the simple, everyday activities of life,” Saranya said. “So, we were educating the parents to determine when they could integrate their child and, if that were not possible, what support they could give their kids and how they could develop them. We also reassured them that attending mainstream school was not the end of the world. There are many other options. Basically, the whole idea is to ensure that the child leads a happy, stress-free and productive life even after they attain 18 years of age.

“We have to ensure that the challenging behaviours are reduced at an early age else when a child reaches teenage, they will face a lot of difficulties. To achieve this intensive early intervention and applied behaviour analysis therapy must be provided.  We spoke about focusing more on the child and the necessary skills to be developed rather than panicking and sending the child to a mainstream school to avoid social stigma,” Saranya added.

Usually kindergarten classes (LKG, UKG) are good and they can cope very well, because everything that they learn are also taught and practiced at the therapy Centre or special needs school. But, once they move to first grade, second grade and on to the higher classes, the focus shifts to academics. It is then that these kids start struggling with basic mathematics and science subjects and the parents completely ignore teaching them about life skills, as the attention has turned to academics.

 Before anybody can realize, within a year or so, whatever skills were developed are slowly lost. So, Third Eye advises parents that, if a child is really ready for mainstream school, they can go ahead and integrate them. But, if they are not, parents should try to teach them other skills. There are plenty of skills that these children can develop to ensure they can start working after they reach 18.