Make no bones about it, a learning disability is lifelong. A child or young person might have a mild, moderate or severe learning disability, which will affect the amount of support they need in their day-to-day life. Children with a learning disability find it harder than others to learn, understand and communicate, and those factors are very much covered in this moving account 'Loving Akhilesh - Reflections of Parenting a Child with Severe Learning Disabilities' by Dhanalakshmi Kadari.
Children with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) need full-time help with every part of their lives - including eating, drinking, washing, dressing and going to the toilet. But what’s important to remember is that a learning disability is not a mental illness. It is also different to a learning difficulty, which is often used to describe things like dyslexia. Children or young people who have a learning disability are aware of what goes on around them. However, their ability to understand and communicate may be limited, and they can find it hard to express themselves. Speech problems can make it even harder to make other people understand their feelings and needs.
For a parent like Dhanalakshmi, it is clear that it was distressing to discover that her child has a learning disability. From the outset, communication is hard with a disabled child, its difficult to manage their behaviour and problematic for other people to understand. As the author points out in her book, there are a number of support services available such as outreach, short breaks and residential support.
Disability does not stop a child from having a full and enjoyable life, however. The aim of all the specialist services is to help children with a general learning disability and their families to have lives that are as enjoyable and fulfilling as those of other people.
The National Health Service (NHS) states that learning disabilities affect around 1.5 million people in the United Kingdom, and that this figure is rising by the minute. ‘Loving Akhilesh - Reflections of Parenting a Child with Severe Learning Disabilities’ is based on Dhanalakshmi Kadari’s parenting experience with her son, Akhilesh Kadari, who was diagnosed with severe learning disabilities soon after birth. In her book she talks about his care including his birth story, health and social care plans, and his medical diagnoses.
Says Dhanalakshmi; “Being my son’s main carer since his birth, I wanted to share my parenting experience with others to help raise awareness of learning disabilities, to provide a good insight into the advancements in the resources available when caring for a child with learning disabilities, to provide hints, tips and ideas for parenting and finally, to highlight that a parent’s job is to not cure the disability but to create the best physical, mental, spiritual and social environment for the child to help them work through their challenges.
“As Kevin Heath says, ‘as our kids grow, they may forget what you said, but they won’t forget how you made them feel.’“
In the author’s words:
“This book is targeted for everyone, especially towards families caring for a child with learning disabilities. We hope that the content will help raise awareness of learning disabilities and the resources available to care for a child with special needs such as Autism, Cerebral Palsy and ADHD.”
About the author:
Dhanalakshmi Kadari was born in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, on the Bay of Bengal, India, before coming to the UK where she studied at University of Essex. Married to Ravi, the family lives in Ipswich, Suffolk.
'Loving Akhilesh - Reflections of Parenting a Child with Severe Learning Disabilities' (ISBN 9798457946033) by Dhanalakshmi Kadari is self-published and is available at Amazon in paperback RRP £13.99 and in Kindle, RRP £7.99 as well as Barnes and Noble and Kobo-See:
https://www.barnesandnoble.
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