June 2016 -

Monthly Archives: June 2016

Learn Yoga from the Differently-abled at MBCN

Learn Yoga from the Differently-abled at MBCN

We have talked about several interventions and rehabilitation methods to empower the differently-abled and integrate them with the mainstream. But, all talks of offering special education and treatment therapies may turn futile if learning is not made fun for children. It is believed that our senses are able to grasp more if the lessons are interesting, and are imparted through visuals. And, for education with entertainment, the best way to teach is through the extra-curricular activities.

Yoga is not just an extracurricular activity but a therapy that addresses the learning and developmental limitations in people with special needs. It is generally used for addressing such challenges like Autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Sensory Processing Disorders. This therapy has several physiological, cognitive, socio-emotional and sensory-motor benefits.

At Mata Bhagwanti Chadha Niketan (MBCN), our charitable school for children with special needs, kids are taught through experiential learning to apply-

  • BREATH in improving self-control, modulation and supporting respiration for better language
  • MOVEMENT to enhance motor planning, balance, strength, co-ordination and flexibility
  • RELAXATION to de-stress and gain an attentive mind

Yoga offers therapeutic variations that go hand-in-hand with physiotherapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy to address specific disorders.

It demonstrates poses, breathing techniques and meditation to facilitate attention, relaxation and focus.

Read further about Yoga exercises for the union of body, mind and spirit.

Anulom Vilom Pranayam

It follows an alternate nostril breathing method. Close your nostrils alternatively through second and third fingers as well as the right hand thumb. Keep your palm in front of the face but above nose to breathe freely through nostrils. The exercise keeps us calm, and enhances memory and concentration. It is effective in ADHD.

Bhramri Pranayam

It involves breathing exercise while making a sound like buzzing bumblebee. It is effective in soothing nerves when facing behavioural problems like anxiety and restlessness. Invariably, it helps increase attention span, motor co-ordination and the capacity of learning and acting on instructions. This works wonders to cure ADHD and enable sensory processing in autistic kids.

Meditation

It is mostly effective in curing ADHD by enhancing concentration.

Chakrasana

Lie down on back while your feet are apart. Now, bend your knees and let your feet fell flat on the ground. Then, bring your palms under the shoulders with fingers pointing towards them. Thereafter, lift your head and shoulders off the floor while straightening your arms. Your body must look like a semi-circular arch. This is Chakrasana, the wheel pose that improves the body stance.

Dhanurasana

Dhanurasana has the same purpose. For this, you need to pose like a bow.

Sarvangasana

Sarvangasana is the shoulder stand pose which improves the circulation of blood and oxygen through our brain.

Yoga contributes a lot as a therapy for both physical and mental well-being of a differently-abled person. But, it is equally beneficial for all who go through slightest of the behavioural issues – anger, depression, anxiety.

 

Aditya and Happy: Defeating Autism and Inspiring Life at MBCN

Aditya and Happy: Defeating Autism and Inspiring Life at MBCN

Autism is not a processing error. It is a different operating system.

If you have no clue about Autism or Autism Spectrum Disorder, then you must know that these terms are used interchangeably to describe a number of complex disorders. Autism can be considered a spectrum condition which goes back to the issues with brain development. Children with autism display repetitive behaviour, difficulties in non-verbal and verbal communication as well as problems in social interactions, attention and motor coordination.

When we talk about repetitive behaviour, we basically refer to repeating certain actions and over-indulgence in individual interests. A slight deviation from common routine upsets them. They lack social communication, therefore, make little eye contact and rarely look at or listen to other people. They get away with gestures, facial expressions and movements and can’t go with the uttered words.

Sensing the Sensitivity

Autistic people can experience under or over-sensitivity to touch, smell, sound, light, taste and colours. For instance, there are certain background sounds that other people ignore but the autistic people find it quite distracting and unbearably loud. This type of hypersensitivity may lead to anxiety and physical pain. Those who are hypo-sensitive, cannot feel pain and need to spin, flap or rock their hands in order to stimulate sensation, help with balancing and dealing with stress.  Therefore, it is difficult for them to even carry out the fine motor tasks, such as tying shoelaces.

However, it is their different abilities in which their strengths and abilities lie. Children with autism may have above-average intelligence, pay attention to detail and are strong auditory and visual learners. Since, autistic children go through a spectrum condition and not a disease, there is no particular cause behind autism. It is believed to occur due to certain environmental factors and autism risk genes that affect early brain development. These factors affect a child during birth or even before it.

MBCN Making a Difference

Such a child can seek help at a charitable school for special children, Mata Bhagwanti Chadha Niketan (MBCN). Here, a child psychiatrist, a speech-language pathologist and a developmental paediatrician work together in training them to improve their communication, age-appropriate skills and brain development. Just pay attention to the numerous success stories here and you will know what we mean.

Aditya and Happy Fight Autism

Focus on the case of Aditya Mishra. A quite talented boy, Aditya was accepted under the Autistic Wing of MBCN. Teach him anything during an activity class and he catches up quick without delay. As you teach, he tries not to forget or miss out on any part. He remembers stories from the movies he has watched and memorises songs, bhajans, stuti and stotras in one go. He can recite the most difficult of stotras and songs without stuttering or fumbling. He just needs to listen once and is ready to surprise you with his memory and singing ability. This small wonder is a storehouse of energy and is always keen on learning new things.

Did you meet Aditya Anand Raj aka Happy from the Autistic Wing yet? Come to MBCN where you may find him busy sketching. He is brimming with creativity, hence, can draw anything which he can be asked for. Ask him to draw something and he will oblige you with his fingers running fast on paper. He can even get down to sketching with an abstract idea while enjoying his class activities. He also excels in studies and is really good at subjects including English, Maths and Hindi.

These two are stars shining bright every day at MBCN while disparaging the myth that being autistic reduces your mental abilities. Aditya and Happy are living examples who are overcoming all possible challenges and utilising their limitless possibilities. They inspire living to the world in their own unique ways.

 

MBCN employs superior Speech and Hearing techniques for differently abled

MBCN employs superior Speech and Hearing techniques for differently abled

Not being able to speak is not the same as not having anything to say. – Rosemary Crossely

It is the Better Hearing and Speech month. It is time to learn to hear and speak better. Enter a Samvaad class at Mata Bhagwanti Chadha Niketan and know how the teachers and speech therapists help improve the speech and hearing ability in children. Attend a classroom session and you learn that it all starts with a Language Development Book.

Language Development through Visual Clues

The book is full of illustrations and pictorial representations that help speech and hearing impaired students form a word vocabulary. At MBCN, they are taught through pictures that depict a market scene, school, jungle or a garden. This helps them pick up words and build their vocabulary just like the way we play scrabble. They learn to make sentences based on what they see in the picture.

Apart from heightening their visual senses, the charitable school for special children offers them a therapy for improving their speaking and hearing ability. A speech therapy is derived focusing on different reasons. We came across a child who was unable to hear sounds since birth that eventually led to his speaking inability. Therapists say that his brain area that deals with hearing is damaged. The problem may occur even when that particular area of brain is still developing.

Areas of Therapy

Some of the Down Syndrome affected children have a problem of delayed speech due to their low IQ level. Therefore, we have therapies different for each of these problems. When it comes to the Hearing Impaired (HI) children, our therapists focus on the three basic areas – auditory training, language and speech. While conducting auditory training, we perform hearing assessment on the affected kids and provide them with hearing aids according to the extent of their need.

Thereafter, such kids are trained in hearing through several steps. The process includes awareness, localisation, discrimination and stabilization of sound. Then, we identify Specific Language Impairment (SLI) – the trouble of understanding what others are speaking (receptive language) and difficulty in sharing personal thoughts (expressive language). And, then there is Apraxia of Speech, where it becomes difficult to put syllables and sounds together in the right order for constructing words.

Auditory Training

During auditory training, we use hearing aids as an artificial way to allow better hearing. These devices are helpful in amplifying sounds through digital or analog way. We provide various types of hearing aids depending upon the condition of a child – mild, moderate, severe, moderately severe and profound.

Types of Aids

Initially, children with profound hearing loss are offered separate aids like Body Label, Behind-the-Ear (BTE), On-the-Ear, In-the-Ear (ITE), In-the-Canal (ITC) and Completely-In-the-Canal (CIC). All of these machines have a system of manually controlled volume matching an individual’s comfort level.

In digital, the hearing machine requires to have a default decibel (dB) setting for facilitating sound clarity at different frequencies. For instance, a child may need 60 dB at the sound frequency of 250 Hz and 70 dB at 500 Hz. Then, we correct the speaking ability through speech software. Currently, there are eight speech therapists to improve speech in children by teaching them through flash cards and Play method.

Doctored Speech Method

The Play method involves the doctored speech software in which a child (1-4 years old) gets motivated to phonate through available animated visual clues. The animated visuals are in the form of games that let a child modify his or her pitch, loudness and voicing too. The whole concept of phonetic education aims at bringing improvement in the manner and point of articulation. This is the best kind of rehabilitation treatment that can be ensured for a child with speech and hearing disability.

Spread the idea of better speech and hearing and help people understand it better.

Splash of Colours and Love on Mother’s Day at MBCN

Splash of Colours and Love on Mother’s Day at MBCN

God could not be everywhere, and therefore, he made mothers – Rudyard Kipling

Desks were splattered with water colours. Paint brushes were dropping on floors. Drawings were halfway through completion. Heart-shaped cut-outs were laid out to put hand prints on. Messages were thought out in minds. This was the scene at Mata Bhagwanti Chadha Niketan (MBCN) just a day before Mother’s Day.

Greeting Through Cards

A lot of differently abled energetic kids were busy making cards and gifts for their mothers. They drew sketches and cut out colourful flower petals to be pasted on the greeting cards. They showcased their creative best while using hand and thumb to paint their way through a colourful mix of little hearts. It was such an uplifting sight to see their hands all coated in paint dripping from the fingers, making the floor look so colourful like one big, shapeless rainbow.

Paint, Write or Paste the Message

When it comes to expressing love for our mothers, everything is welcome. Every gesture counts because a mother is our closest friend and our love of first sight ever since we opened our eyes. She is a constant anchor of support in all our life struggles, and someone who’s always there to back us up without any conditions.

Sharing their immense love, the differently-abled kids at our charitable school for special children jotted messages on cards and posed with their mothers. Here, every special child had his or her own way of conveying a message. They freely utilized the white canvas to express themselves on the occasion. They scribbled with their sketch pens, painted using colours and pasted designs on a sheet of paper.

Archit Gets Affectionate with Words

Ask Archit, a child with Cerebral Palsy and verbal limitations, about the importance of a mother in his life. He faltered but spoke at length to share what all her mother does for him on a daily basis. He expressed, ‘Her day starts with cooking breakfast and she takes care of all my needs. I just love my mother.’

Join the Celebration

For students at MBCN, Mother’s Day is not just a day of momentary celebration. It is the time when they join hands to appreciate the efforts that their mothers make every day to raise them and help them become a better person. A mother wakes up early every day, performs the basic household chores, understands us and takes care of all our necessities. This is the reason we are blessed to have them as angels in our life.

Embodying the same spirit, faculty, kids and parents at MBCN celebrated the day with immense joy and love. It was indeed refreshing to see such unparalleled bond of love and warmth amidst the flurry of greetings, cards and gifts.