Irrespective of culture, race or geographical location; children are not just bye products of the marital relationship but a crucial basis for societal modulation of the family unit. This explains the basis for different cultures having varied but potent reactions to infertility where children cannot be produced and having children with peculiar challenges. Beyond the medical explanations for infertility or special children; there are very potent sociocultural and religious issues that are capable of militating against beneficial approach to the effective management options of these problems. Special children in this context are those with peculiar needs that require much more support than other children for them to function optimally. This condition may have been precipitated by the mishandling of the pregnancy where certain drugs are taken that damage the growing brain of fetus, failure to take precautions against possibility of jaundice in certain circumstances or mismanagement of the delivery process such as prolonged labor, premature draining of the waters that can result in fetal distress and mechanical trauma to the fragile brain of the new born baby through unprofessional handling of the delivery process. We have many untrained traditional birth attendants and religious maternity centers that are not professionally supervised which may lead to an increased incidence in the population of children with special needs. There may be other causes traceable to some genetic factors, some inherited metabolic disorders or advanced maternal age. These children may be born with cognitive defects associated with seizures that could manifest in many ways. As the child grows there may be deficits in the achievement of developmental milestones with associated poor performance in the school short of that expected for their chronological age. The overall presentation could be mild, moderate or severe depending on the severity on the overall global functioning of the child. These children may also have problems with posture and sensations that will require orthopedic and physiotherapeutic interventions. These children often require a multidisciplinarian approach in their management with the ultimate goal of assisting them maximize the available intellectual resources for their ultimate good. There are some of them that can perform brilliantly well in certain aspects of life when appropriate educational techniques identify such dimensions and assist in developing them. Drugs are often indicated in a number of them which should be professionally administered so that the side effects of some of these drugs do not outweigh the beneficial effects especially for children with behavioral challenges that require medications.
However, our society through the sick role has explanations and prescribed interventions for these special children which make it difficult for the parents of these children to get the best out of them. Within this context, children with special needs are viewed as products of spiritual attacks and that their parents may be serving some form of punishment from God for a wrongdoing which can explain the hostile attitude of some neighbors to these children and the society at large. In some instances these children are viewed as spiritual agents of misfortune and some individuals in the society use them as agents of social crime. As a result of the stigma, some of them are locked up away from the glare of the public without any intelligently coordinated intervention since they are seen as financial and emotional devourers. Africans through our primitive culture have very wrong attitudes to these children that make them vulnerable to all forms of abuse. The parents by extension are also maligned especially the mothers who may be seen as the custodian of evil forces that manifest through abnormal children in their own reckoning. Several unwholesome religious and cultural interventions include beatings, starving and burning of certain parts of their bodies in the process of exorcism apart from injuries a number of them sustain through uncontrolled seizure attacks. When these children exhibit some behavioral problems as a result of poor judgment or antisocial behavior, such a child is often treated with grave physical abuse tending towards ostracism while the parents are made to feel guilty for having brought such a child into the world. Some individuals actually rape such children, use them to commit crimes and take advantage of their deficits rather than support them to maximize their available intellectual resources. This unfavorable position in the society has affected government and relevant health agencies that should have been supportive in giving these children the best. The care of such children consumes not only enormous financial resources but a lot of emotional resources especially on the part of the parents. Policies that can support, protect and encourage professional care of these children should be encouraged. Corporate institutions can rise to this challenge by setting up a highly equipped educational and vocational centers for these children in a multidisciplinary setting as social network of their children should be encouraged.
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