The Role of Parents in Raising Special Need Children By Dr Nadeem Ghayas
August 24, 2025
Introduction
Parents play a very important role in the life of their special need child. When parents support their child, the child feels safe, accepted, and encouraged to try new things. Parents are critical to the life of children with special needs. Their presence, lessons, and encouragement can have a serious influence on the emotional state, learning process and social growth of a child. Children feel secure, appreciated, and inspired to develop their potential when the parents are capable of offering constant care, support, and guidance to them. The paper explores essential roles that parents play, and how to ensure that these roles are enhanced to achieve maximum benefits in children with special needs.
H2: Respecting the Needs of Children with Special Needs.
Strengths and Challenges.
Students with special needs have strengths and challenges that are always different. Parents are in a better position to discover the areas in which their child is good and those that need extra help as they are closely acquainted with the child. American Psychiatric Association (2013) expresses that comprehending such individual profile enables parents to be in a position to offer their personal intervention and lobby the needs of their child.
Emotional and Social Needs
Children having developmental, intellectual, or physical disabilities, tend to have special emotional and social problems. Sense of belonging and self worth is essential in confidence and social integration and it is achieved through parental support (Hodapp and Dykens, 2017). Employing emotional coaching actively allows parents to be able to contribute to the development of resiliency, emotional regulation, and social skills in their children.
The Parents as the Major Educators.
Educating at Home
Parents are the initial and most uniform educators in the life of a child. Home based learning and routine development is important to children with special needs. Learning outcomes are improved with the help of structured daily activities, specific learning plans, and a daily repetitive practice of skills (Turnbull et al., 2015). These include instruction in the area of daily living (dressing, feeding, and hygiene), or academic reinforcement with modified lesson plans.
School/Therapist Collaboration.
The partnership between the parents and the teachers, therapists, and special educators will provide the children with a coordinated and effective assistance. Parents can overcome the gap between the home and school-based interventions by attending meetings, tracking progress, and giving feedback. The study carried out by Blue-Banning et al. (2004) shows that, high parent-professional partnership results into better academic and social performance of children with disabilities.
Advocacy and Rights
Interpreting the Rights of Law.
The rights of the child in the educational and disability laws need to be understood by the parents. Legal protections in Pakistan include the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2020 which mandates inclusive education. Those parents who support appropriate accommodations, individual education plans, and access to therapies help the child to get equal opportunities.
Speaking Up for Your Child
Advocacy entails the process of relaying the needs of the child to the schools, medical practitioners, and community organizations. The parents hold a very significant position in making sure that services are adequate, timely and personalized. Parental awareness can break the barriers and facilitate inclusion (Lindsay, 2011).
Caring about Emotional Well-being.
Building Self-Esteem
Constant encouragement by the parents can make children feel confident in their capabilities. Compliments on the hard work, acknowledgements of achievements and tolerance of failures reinforce self esteem. Guralnick (2011) reports that children that have good self-esteem have improved social integration and adaptive behaviors.
Coping with Stress
The stress and problem-solving strategies are also modeled by the parents. Patience, flexibility and positive problem-solving are the traits that parents impart in children to show them how to overcome difficulties in life. Mindfulness, regular scheduling, and transparent communication are some of the techniques that make anxiety lower and resilience higher.
Daily Support Practical Strategies.
Structured Routines
Establishing routines that children with special needs can predict in their day to day lives makes them feel safe and also minimizes the behavioral difficulties. Meal-timetables, educational activities, a therapy program, and recreational activities help to regulate cognition and emotion (Smith et al., 2007).
Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement strategies promote learning and desired behaviors. Rewards should be based on effort, improvement, and achievements to keep the learner motivated and interested in learning. Reinforcement may be done through verbal praise, token systems or activities of choice.
Home-based Therapy Integration.
Parents can support therapy goals with home-based activities, including speech, occupational, or physical therapy activities. Home-professional consistency enhances faster skills acquisition and learning generalization (McConachie et al., 2015).
Building Independence
Promoting Decision-Making.
The way parents can instill independence is by letting children make their own decisions based on their ages. The most basic decisions, such as choosing clothes or snacks, give children more power and confidence in decision-making.
Teaching Life Skills
Children are trained in life skills such as personal hygiene, money management and social interactions that enables them to be more independent. The studies indicate that self-sufficiency in the long term is enhanced by early and regular teaching of skills (Wehmeyer et al., 2013).
Community Involvement and Inclusion.
Engaging in Social Activities.
Participation in inclusive community activities encourages children to develop social experiences, friendships and sense of belonging. The activities may involve sports, arts, or community events that are accommodating to the special needs.
Tapping into Support Networks.
The parents receive the advantages of using support groups, advocacy groups, and communities on the internet. These networks offer resources, emotional support and practical advice to deal with challenges (Kyzar et al., 2012).
Special Plan to Parents in Pakistan.
The perception and support networks of children with special needs in Pakistan are on the rise but there are loopholes. The parents have little access to special services, inclusive education and trained professionals. Resources are slowly being extended by community based programs, NGOs and government initiatives. The parents can make a difference by joining forces with the local organizations and participating in the education on the best practices, urging the improvement of the provided services (Shah, 2020). Parental strategies are also dependent upon cultural attitudes, and it is important to address the issue of awareness campaigns and family education.
Conclusion
The parents are essential collaborators in the growth and health of children with special needs. Parents providing their child with a supportive environment through the knowledge of their individual strengths and issues, working together with professionals, advancing rights, and emotional and practical skills contribute to growth, independence, and social integration. Children are able to successfully cope with life because of the love, patience, and dedication of their parents.
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric publishing.
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Guralnick, M. J. (2011). The reason why early intervention is effective: systems. Infants & Young Children, 24(1), 6-28.
Hodapp, R. M., & Dykens, E. M. (2017). Intellectual disabilities. I. B. Weiner and W. E. Craighead, (Eds.), The Corsini encyclopedia of psychology (4th ed., pp. 1-4). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Kyzar, K., Turnbull, A., Summers, J. A., and Gomez, V. (2012). Family-professional partnerships: An empirical literature review. Journal of Early Intervention, 34(3), 193-219.
Lindsay, G. (2011). Disparities in special education to children with developmental disorders. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 24(6),509-520.
McConachie, H., Randle, V., Hammal, D., and Le Couteur, A. (2015). Parents of children with suspected autism spectrum disorder A controlled trial of a parent training course. Journal of Pediatrics, 166(6), 1423-1429.
Shah, S. (2020). Children with special needs education and support in Pakistan. Pakistan Journal of social Sciences, 40(1), 55-68.
Smith, T., Groen, A. D., & Wynn, J. W. (2007). Randomised controlled trial of intensive early intervention in children with pervasive developmental disorder. American Journal of Mental Retardation, 112(4), 233-253.
Turnbull, A., Turnbull, R., Wehmeyer, M., and Shogren, K. (2015). Super lives: Special education in modern schools. Pearson.
Wehmeyer, M. L., Shogren, K. A., Little, T. D., and Lopez, S. J. (2013). Self-determination development during the life-course. The Oxford handbook of positive psychology (2nd ed., pp. 330-338). Oxford University Press.