What is Intellectual Disability?
- Intellectual Disability is a medical condition that is diagnosed using strict criteria from the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition).
- Most of these criteria are functional in nature, and includes both intellectual and adaptive functioning deficits in conceptual, social, and practical domains.
An informal description of Intellectual disability:
- It is not a curse, it is a medical condition that starts during pregnancy or during early childhood.
- Sometimes during pregnancy or early childhood, parts of the brain does not develop fully, and those parts of a child’s ability is limited.
- Areas such as remembering, reading, writing, maths are mostly affected.
- Areas such as joy, loving, playing, dancing, singing, sport still develop.
- There is no medical cure for intellectual disability, it is a permanent medical condition.
- All the children at Thuthukani have severe to profound intellectual disability. Some have additional disabilities, such as ASD, CP, Down Syndrome, Epilepsy, Hearing-, Visual- or Speech Impairments, Mobility Impairments and many more.
- It is our job to provide our children with the best adapted education, suited to their specific needs. In this way we help them to live fulfilled lives, and we expose them to as many life experiences as possible.
- It is our job at Thuthukani to help the child to develop the smaller parts of their brain, and to find the bigger parts of their brain, so that they can find and show their talents.