Special Need Characteristics

Children whose emotional or physical disorders, age, race, membership in a sibling group, a history of abuse, or other factors contribute to a lengthy stay in foster care. Common special needs conditions and diagnoses include: serious medical conditions; emotional and behavioral disorders; history of abuse or neglect; medical or genetic risk due to familial mental illness or parental substance abuse.

Learning Disabilities
Children with learning disabilities usually have normal or above normal intelligence but struggle with some kinds of learning. Recognizing individual letters might be easy but putting them together to read may be confusing. Tying shoes or fitting together the pieces of a puzzle may be perplexing, or simple math insurmountable. Because children with learning disabilities have such a hard time mastering certain tasks, they are often frustrated, angry, or depressed, and they may have a poor image of themselves. Children with learning disabilities may know just what they want to accomplish, what they want to say or write or do, but can't find a straightforward path to do it.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

The most common symptoms of ADHD are distractibility, difficulty with concentration and focus, short term memory slippage, procrastination, problems organizing ideas and belongings, tardiness, impulsivity, and weak planning and execution. Not all people with ADHD have all the symptoms. Most ordinary people exhibit some of these behaviors but not to the point where they seriously interfere with the person's work, relationships, or studies or cause anxiety or depression.

Mental Retardation
An individual is considered to have mental retardation based on the following three criteria: intellectual functioning level (IQ) is below 70-75 significant limitations exist in two or more adaptive skill areas the condition is present from childhood (defined as age 18 or less)

Physical Disorders The term developmental disability/physical

disorders means a severe, chronic disability of an individual 5 years of age or older that: is attributable to a mental or physical impairment or combination of mental and physical impairments; is manifested before the individual attains age 22; is likely to continue indefinitely; results in substantial functional limitations in three or more of the following areas of major life activity: self-care, receptive and expressive language, learning, mobility, self-direction, capacity for independent living, and economic self-sufficiency; and

 Children with sensory disorders are oversensitive to touch sensations (tactile defensiveness), they will avoid touching and being touched and will shy away from messy play, physical contact with others, pets, certain textures of fabric, many foods, bumpy sock seams, etc. On the other hand, if they are under-responsive to touch sensations, they'll crave touching and being touched. These children will be finger painting their arms, stuffing their mouths with too much food, shouting indoors, turning up the volume and bumping and crashing into people and furniture. If children are oversensitive or defensive to movement experiences, their feet will never leave the ground. They will shun playground equipment and object to riding in the car or elevator. They may refuse to be picked up. Or, if they are under-responsive, they may crave intense movement, and seem always to be in upside-down positions, swinging on the tire swing for long periods, and on-the-go constantly -jumping, bouncing, rocking and swaying.

According to Elizabeth M. Prather, Ph.D, Finding the exact cause or causes of your child's speech problem can be difficult. Each child's speech is influenced by many factors, including the ability to hear, the physical development of the mouth and throat, and the abilities the child inherits. Some of the most common causes of delay she discusses are:
1. Hearing Loss: Children learn to speak by hearing others speak. So when repeat ear infections or other hearing problems occur children can not hear speech correctly so cannot learn to speak correctly. 2. Language Delay: Children may have difficulty learning the meaning of words and how to use words in sentences. Learning delays affect language acquisition. 3. Genetic Inheritance: It is common but not inevitable that late speech development runs in families. One or both parents, or any number of relatives may have had speech problems when they were young. However, children with slow speech development do not always have parents who had the same problem. 4. Bad Speech Habits: When children are beginning to speak they say many words incorrectly. If a child repeats an incorrect pattern long enough they learn it as a habit. For example, a child may say bor if instead of for if. If uncorrected the bad speech will become habit.

Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life. It is a brain disorder that affects a person's ability to communicate, form relationships with others, and respond appropriately to the environment. People with autism are not physically disabled and 'look' just like anybody without the disability. Those with highfunctioning autism may have speech and intelligence intact. Others may be mentally disabled, mute, or have serious language delays. Autism may make them seem closed off and shut down. People with autism may have some of the following traits:
Has any loss of any language or social skill at any age. Difficulty in expressing needs; uses gestures or pointing instead of words Repeating words or phrases in place of normal, responsive language Laughing, crying, showing distress for reasons not apparent to others Prefers to be alone; aloof manner Unresponsive to normal teaching methods No real fears of danger

Emotional and Behavioral Disorders