KUCHING: Parents of children with development delay should seek help from specialists and send their children to childcare centres that could train them.
Fatimah (right) interacts with a child at Taska Bintang Intelek Montessori. Hasnah is at second right.
Minister of Welfare, Women and Family Development Datuk Fatimah Abdullah said children with such shortcomings did not necessarily have physical development issues but might face difficulties in reaching their development milestones.
For instance, she said, an over one-year-old child should be able to utter five words apart from ‘papa and mama’, and as the child grew, he or she ought to pick up simple phrases.
“However, there are cases where children suffer development delay in the mental and speech aspects. There is nothing wrong with the child’s hearing, but he or she still has not yet learned to speak. That may be development delay.
“These children are physically okay, but they need to be trained. The earlier we intervene, diagnose the problem, and give support, the better the results,” she told reporters after visiting Taska Bintang Intelek Montessori at Jalan Rubber Barat here yesterday.
Fatimah lauded the childcare centre for providing a support system for parents of children with development delay.
She observed some parents lacked the knowledge and skills in development delay, and one way to tackle the problem would be for the ministry to work with practitioners such as Taska Bintang Intelek Montessori and the Health Ministry.
“We want to provide a support system for our children with development delay and their parents.”
Taska Bintang Intelek Montessori principal Datin Seri Hasnah Mahda described the centre as “just a normal school”, where a stimulating and nurturing environment was provided for children with development delay.
“There are always children with development delay; we just need to identify the problems and learn how to handle them.”
She said her centre offered a platform for these children to settle in, besides giving them proper guidance.
According to Wikipedia, Montessori education is an educational approach developed by Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori. It is characterised by an emphasis on independence, freedom with limits, and respect for a child’s natural psychological, physical and social development.
In Italy, Hasnah said Montessori education was for children who were not normal.
In the past 21 years, she said Taska Bintang Intelek Montessori had kept a low teacher-children ratio in order to provide the most adequate training and care for the young.
There were intense circumstances that required a teacher to attend to only two children, she said, adding the centre had registered an average of 45 children per year.
To a question, Hasnah said the most aggressive cases they experienced involved children who were prone to self-inflicted pains and had to be referred for therapy.
“They would hurt themselves by knocking the head against the wall. We had to refer them to a special therapist. It sometimes takes time, like one to six months, for a child to accommodate.”