Topic 11

In the material presented below, along with children with intellectual disabilities in the traditional sense, gifted children will also be considered, because deviations can be directed both in the direction of decreasing, i.e., delay, underdevelopment, and in the direction of growth.

11.1. Children with developmental disabilities

This category includes children with a temporary delay in mental development, with asthenic, reactive states, conflict experiences. The reasons for the course of these disorders are different, but they are united by the following: these children do not have an organic brain lesion.

To the category of children with a temporary delay in mental development include children with psychophysical or mental infantilism and those in whom infantilism is combined with a delay in the development of cognitive activity, i.e. voluntary attention, logical memorization, spatial representations, perception, thinking, etc. The reasons for the delay may be: toxicosis or violation maternal nutrition during pregnancy; prematurity due to the fact that during pregnancy the mother suffered a viral flu, malaria, hepatitis, typhoid fever; light birth injuries, fetal asphyxia (lack of oxygen supply to the fetus due to torsion of the umbilical cord, etc.). If a child has had dyspepsia or dysentery in the first year of life, he may also experience a developmental delay. Such children later begin to walk, talk, are small in weight and height, they have oddities in the emotional-volitional sphere. At senior school age, they retain the features of younger preschoolers: the leading activity is the game; spontaneity in behavior is traced, self-service skills are not developed.

At preschool age, these children do not particularly stand out from the general mass, since they do not have to face rigidly regulated requirements, but already at school they are forced to draw attention to themselves. They are poorly involved in educational activities, they do not perceive and do not perform school tasks, they behave like in a kindergarten. They do not have school interests, commitment in relation to the implementation of the proposed task, they hardly master the skills of writing and reading, they quickly get tired, suffer from headaches. Children with psychophysical infantilism do not have intellectual insufficiency: they can understand the meaning of the story they read, correctly decompose the proposed series of pictures, and understand the meaning of the plot picture. Such children need an individual approach from the very beginning of education and with the right pedagogical approach, learning difficulties can be overcome.

As mentioned above, the category of children with a temporary delay in development includes children in whom infantilism is combined with some delay in the development of cognitive activity. They have insufficient general development, which, combined with learning difficulties, can be erroneously diagnosed as oligophrenia.

So, sometimes developmental delays can concern only the emotional-volitional sphere, in other cases, a delay in the development of thinking is added to this, but such children are always characterized by the features of younger children and require a special pedagogical approach when learning.

Children with asthenic conditions. Any unfavorable factors, be it somatic infections, minor injuries or very mild focal lesions of the brain, as well as prolonged and severe experiences, overwork primarily affect the central nervous system and can cause functional disorders of mental activity. Depending on the reasons that caused the asthenic state, cerebral and somatogenic asthenia are distinguished.

The cause of cerebral asthenia is that the circulation of fluid in the brain is disturbed. This can happen either as a result of a concussion or an inflammatory focus in the brain, even a small, narrow localized one. With inflammatory brain processes and cranial injuries, the amount of cerebrospinal fluid may increase and then its circulation is disturbed.

A characteristic feature of cerebral asthenia is a violation of intellectual activity with a primary intact intellect. During work, such children quickly become fatigued, nervous exhaustion occurs, and headaches occur. As a result, working capacity is impaired, memory and attention are weakened, children do not concentrate well during the task or are easily distracted from work. In behavior, this is expressed as follows: some children are overly excited, restless, overly mobile, irritable, tearful, while others, on the contrary, are lethargic, timid, slow, inhibited, and insecure. Such children often refuse to answer in class for fear of saying something wrong.

The causes of somatogenic asthenia are physical weakness, somatic diseases (diseases of internal organs, cardiovascular system), childhood infectious diseases.

Features of asthenia in diseases of the internal organs are most characteristically manifested in children with slowly ongoing tuberculous intoxication. This is expressed in the fact that children quickly get tired, they develop headaches, irritability, a tendency to whims, tearfulness, sleep disturbance, loss of appetite, mood instability, low stamina, motor restlessness. The emotional state of such children is unstable, so they are sensitive to adverse conditions in the classroom and at home. In behavior, this can manifest itself in different ways: some become rude, irritable, aggressive, disobedient, others become shy, whiny, timid, others become withdrawn, gloomy.

A decrease in academic performance, asthenic conditions, and behavioral difficulties may arise in a child as a result of a long separation from school due to infectious diseases, such as measles, whooping cough, chickenpox, scarlet fever, severe viral hepatitis, etc. These children have not only gaps in knowledge and physical weakness, but also behavioral changes. They become irritable, whiny, get tired quickly, and are poorly included in the work of the class. Therefore, it is necessary to properly organize pedagogical and medical support, which will eventually completely overcome the consequences of infectious asthenia.

Under reactive states understand the neuropsychiatric disorders that occur in a child as a result of a situation that traumatizes his psyche. Neuropsychiatric disorders in reactive states in children manifest themselves in different ways. It depends on the severity and severity of the traumatic situation, the duration of its impact, the age of the child, the general state of his health and individual personality traits. The manifestations of reactive states include stuttering, tic twitches in different parts of the body, fears, urinary and sometimes fecal incontinence.

In acute traumatic situations, children experience disorders of consciousness of the twilight type, i.e., such when the child performs a series of actions and deeds that he does not remember in the future. Some children become very fussy, make aimless movements, unmotivated actions, while others, on the contrary, become numb and freeze. At primary school age, a temporary loss of some functions may be observed, for example, temporary deafness, mutism (refusal of speech), etc. Adolescents have violations of the entire emotional-volitional sphere: fear, anxiety, depression, refusal to eat, numbness, etc. d.

One of the traumatic situations that affects the behavior and character of the child is enuresis (urinary incontinence). This disorder mainly occurs in nervous and physically weakened children who have experienced prolonged nervous tension or shock, fear, somatic illness. They have a feeling of inferiority, which also manifests itself in different ways. Some become very timid, shy, fearful, indecisive, others, on the contrary, become embittered, become irritable and aggressive. Those and others sometimes have fears related directly to urinary incontinence. Then other fears appear: the dark, a new business, a new environment, new people.

Experiences are very painful due to physical disabilities (limping, strabismus, myopia, hunchback, etc.) and nervous manifestations (stuttering, nervous twitches, fears, etc.). With the wrong attitude of adults towards them, the child may experience a feeling of inferiority, which in the future will lead to isolation, behavioral disorders, and sometimes to a decrease in academic performance.

Conflict experiences arise in children as a result of an internal conflict, which can also disrupt mental development. They are the result of psychogenic factors that traumatize the child in the family or school. The cause of the internal conflict is a difficult, long-term experience, which at some point becomes unbearable for the child. Prolonged and seemingly unresolvable conflict can lead to changes in behavior and character, as well as slow down the mental development of the child.

School conflicts, with their timely and correct understanding by adults, are resolved faster and more painlessly than family ones. However, when school conflicts remain misunderstood by teachers and parents, when help is not provided to the child in time, his condition may worsen and lead to leaving school or pushing him onto the path of antisocial behavior.

Changes in character and behavioral disorders may be the result of raising a child at preschool age, if he is overly pampered, allowed to do whatever he wants, fulfill all his whims and desires. Irritability, incontinence, nervousness, lack of organization of parents can also be the causes of negative manifestations. As a rule, children copy the behavior of their elders, which affects their behavior at school. Difficulties in the behavior of children may be due to the unfavorable situation at home, when children are witnesses of quarrels, scandals, drunkenness. These children often create a negative attitude towards others, which prevents them from making contact at school and studying well, despite the initially intact intelligence. Similar problems may arise in prosperous families if proper upbringing and appropriate control over the child were not provided in a timely manner.

Overcoming the difficulties in the behavior of these children is a very difficult matter. First of all, it is necessary that the teacher understand the state of the child, know the reasons that caused this state, carry out the correct individual approach to it, establish emotional contact with the child; included him in extracurricular activities; built the educational process, based on its positive qualities.

In the re-education of such children, work with the family plays an important role. Explanatory work should be carried out with parents: talk about the age characteristics of their children and the reasons that caused difficulties in behavior. It is important to remember that moralizing, complaints, edifying measures are ineffective. It is necessary to look for an individual approach to each child.

11.2. Psychology of a mentally retarded child

A mentally retarded child is a child whose cognitive activity is permanently impaired due to an organic brain lesion.

The impression of being mentally retarded can be given by deaf and mute children, if they did not study in a specialized kindergarten, by children who have suffered from bone tuberculosis for several years, by lying in a cast, or by living among a foreign-speaking population. But these are not mentally retarded children. Pedagogically neglected children, even with undeveloped cognitive processes, will also not be considered as such, because mentally retarded children must have a combination of two signs:

1) a disorder of cognitive activity and 2) an organic brain lesion that caused this disorder.

The category of mentally retarded children includes oligophrenics: morons, imbeciles and idiots.

Consider oligophrenic children in more detail. Oligophrenia, which in translation into Russian means "low-mindedness", is not the name of any particular disease. Oligophrenia is a clinically heterogeneous group. This is the name of a condition that occurs after various types of damage to the central nervous system of a child in the period before the development of his speech, that is, up to one or two years of life. The causes of oligophrenia can be hereditary and intrauterine damage to the fetus, birth trauma, fetal asphyxia and other diseases that affect the central nervous system of a child up to about two years of age. The features of oligophrenia are as follows: early damage to the central nervous system and subsequent cessation of the disease. With oligophrenia, the mental development of the child occurs on a defective basis. But since in this case the disease is not of a long-term nature, the child is considered practically healthy.

The psyche of an oligophrenic child is completely different from the psyche of a normal child. The immaturity of higher intellectual processes, combined with excessive inertia of behavior, creates a qualitatively unique picture of mental development.

Oligophrenia varies in severity. It is customary to distinguish three degrees of mental retardation: debility (the easiest), imbecility (deeper), idiocy (the most severe).

Morons as a result of training reach a relatively high level of mental development. They become independent citizens, bear responsibility for their actions, master a profession that requires average qualifications, have the right to be owners of houses, buildings, etc. Mental retardation in the degree of debility cannot be a causal insanity, incapacity for work, incapacity of a person. Morons are not allowed to military service.

Imbeciles are deeply retarded children. They do not learn general concepts, rules of arithmetic, grammar, and hardly master the skills of reading and writing. Imbeciles cannot live independently, as they need guardianship and supervision, although they can be adapted to certain types of industrial labor.

Idiot children do not have developed speech, lack self-service skills, impaired coordination of movement. Such children need special care, therefore they are in social security institutions. They can be trained in elementary skills and abilities at home if a specialist called an oligophrenopedagogue deals with them.

11.3. Psychological characteristics of gifted children

Gifted children are children who stand out sharply from their peers with high mental development, which is the result of both natural inclinations and favorable conditions for education (Yu.Z. Gilbukh).

From early childhood, they differ from their peers: they sleep little, start talking early, they have a rich vocabulary, increased attentiveness, insatiable curiosity, excellent memory, such children can follow several events at the same time at the age of three. At the age of two or three, they can concentrate for a long time on completing a task that interests them, returning to it within a few days. Such behavior is not typical for children of this age. Such early manifestations of giftedness usually indicate outstanding intellectual abilities.

Giftedness is determined by the following parameters:

1) rapid development of cognition;

2) psychological development;

3) physical data.

The advanced development of knowledge is manifested as follows.

1. Gifted children are able to do several things at the same time. One gets the impression that they "absorb" everything around them.

2. They are very curious, ask a lot of questions, actively explore the world around them, do not tolerate any restrictions in the study of a particular process. J. Piaget believed that the function of the intellect is to process information and is similar to the function of the body to process food. For gifted children, learning is as natural as breathing. Scientists give this explanation: gifted children have increased biochemical and electrical activity of the brain, and it can "process" intellectual "food" in larger quantities than the brain of ordinary children.

3. These children at an early age are able to trace causal relationships between phenomena, see unexpected connections between concepts and events, and draw appropriate conclusions. All this leads to the emergence of creativity (creativity) and ingenuity.

4. They have a good memory, abstract thinking is developed. They can make full use of existing experience, classify and categorize the available information or experience. This fact is confirmed by the fact that gifted children show a tendency to collect: they like to put the collection in order, systematize it, and reorganize objects. A large vocabulary is accompanied by complex syntactic constructions, the ability to correctly pose a question. They like to read dictionaries, encyclopedias, they prefer games that require the activation of mental abilities.

5. Gifted children easily cope with cognitive uncertainty. This is manifested in the fact that they love difficult tasks and strive to complete them themselves.

6. They are distinguished by an increased concentration of attention, perseverance in achieving a goal that is significant for them in the area that is of interest to them. High dedication to a task can lead to the fact that the child will try to bring it to perfection, and if he does not like the end result, he will tear or break what he worked on. The desire to bring the work started to perfection (perfectionism) is one of the problems most often noted by parents and teachers.

7. These children have formed the main components of the ability to learn: learning skills (fluency in meaningful reading and counting, the habit of accurate, clear design of the products of their mental activity); intellectual training skills (planning of upcoming activities, a thorough analysis of the goal; understanding the requirements of the task, the presence and absence of knowledge to solve it, awareness of the purpose of the activity and the criteria for the quality of the future product, exact adherence to the intended guidelines, control over the performance of work).

The psychological development of gifted children is also different compared to the "average" child.

1. They have a very strong sense of justice, and it appears very early.

2. These children have very broad personal value systems: they acutely perceive social injustice, set high standards for themselves and others, and respond vividly to truth, justice, and harmony.

3. They have a rich imagination. Sometimes they come up with non-existent friends, a desired brother or sister, a bright fantasy life. They enjoy their colorful stories, which causes concern among adults who are afraid that the child lives in his own world, invented, and not real.

5. Gifted children have a well-developed sense of humor. This is due to the fact that their imagination is alive, they are active, they see a lot and therefore discover a lot of funny and awkward things.

6. They try to solve problems that are still difficult for them to cope with. Since these children excel in some areas, parents believe that they will be able to successfully cope with any task. And when a child does not succeed in something, disappointment sets in, which is expressed in a sense of his own imperfection. Such children do not know how to experience failure, because in all their previous endeavors they were on top. Parents should try to protect their children from such experiences from an early age, but within reasonable limits, accustoming them to activities where they do not show the most brilliant results. According to English psychologists, a person needs to know that sometimes failing is normal and even useful. Failure should be taken not as a cause for despair and self-humiliation, but as an opportunity for reassessment and adaptation.

7. Gifted children are characterized by exaggerated fears. Research data shows that these fears have no real basis: children living in cities are most afraid of lions and tigers, not cars. Perhaps these fears are associated with a rich and well-developed imagination.

8. Gifted children have extrasensory abilities (telepathy, clairvoyance). Such properties are common, and they must be treated with understanding.

9. At preschool age, these children, like everyone else, have age-related egocentrism, that is, the projection of their own perception and emotional reaction to the phenomena, minds and hearts of all those present. In other words, a gifted child believes that everyone perceives this or that event in the same way as he does.

10. They have problems with peers, especially at a time when children's self-centeredness is accompanied by sensitivity and irritation due to the inability to do something. The child cannot understand that others perceive the world around them differently than he does. Gifted children suffer from rejection by their peers, which can lead to the development of a negative self-perception. To prevent this from happening, a child from a very early age needs to communicate with the same gifted children.

The physical characteristics of giftedness are as follows: a very high energy potential and a short sleep duration. These properties are manifested from early childhood: in infancy, the duration of sleep is less than 20 hours, and older children quickly refuse daytime sleep.

Fine motor skills are not very developed compared to cognition. Cutting and gluing is much more difficult for a gifted child than doing calculations. You need to know that such psychomotor development for children of preschool and primary school age is normal, it is by no means slowed down, however, such an uneven development leads to the child's irritability.

The following types of giftedness are distinguished: general (mental) and special (artistic, social, sports), one-sided mental giftedness.

Mental abilities are divided according to subject matter: physical and mathematical (simply mathematical), humanitarian, etc. Special (artistic) talent is divided into literary, musical, choreographic, etc.; social - on the ability to legal, pedagogical activities; abilities related to organizational activities in various spheres of society. All these types of giftedness are not isolated from each other; a person can have either one or several abilities. It must be remembered that general and special talents presuppose a certain level of development of mental abilities.

One-sided mental giftedness is characterized by the fact that some mental abilities are well developed, while others are not enough. For example, verbal tests (tasks in which the assessment depends on the level of speech development) the child performs excellently, and non-verbal ones (tasks for spatial thinking and imagination) - poorly. Thus, "one-sidedness means disharmony in abilities, the presence of such abilities that do not reach the norm" (Yu.Z. Gilbukh). In studies, this is expressed as follows: in one or a group of subjects that are interesting to the student, he does well, but in others it is bad.

Authors: Marina Khilko, Maria Tkacheva

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