Mental Retardation

The children who are mentally retarded have some of the common characteristics, though overall each has his or her own individual differences. Mostly children with mental retardation do not have a strong impulse control and they respond to situations with intense reactions. Because they find these situations confusing for them. Thus, they need that the situation be explained to them so that their thinking will not go wrong. The thinking errors are the reason for over-reactions. So to calm them down you need to explain to them the situation by looking directly at them or else they will not be able to hear you.

Most of the times, such children are more physical in their behavior while trying to communicate something rather than using words for the same. Their anger and frustration is usually for a situation which they find complex for themselves. You should on your part try to communicate more with words rather than doing the same with actions. This will help in removing any complexities for them.

Children with mental retardation are not always able to go beyond themselves and to reason or be able to judge the impact of their actions on someone else. They need someone to point this out for them to make them understand their own actions. So if you get successful in making them understand the impact of their behavior they may or may not do the same in the future if they understand that something is wrong. Sometimes, they need to be completely told what to do and how to conduct themselves.

They cannot easily understand the feelings of others. Because they don’t see beyond themselves. They thus have a tendency to blame others for accidents, even though some things might be because of them. This is so because they have immature ideas about causes of things. They only understand simple things and simple actions. Children with mental retardation seldom admit that they have a mental problem, because they want to think of themselves as right. They will pretend to understand things when actually they would not really be getting any point. Their answers are mostly yes so avoid ‘what if’ questions with them.