Characteristics of Children with Special Needs

Characteristics of Children with Special Needs Children with special needs have different characteristics from one another. Children with special needs (ABK) are children who experience deviations or differences from the average of other normal children. In the process of growth or development, abnormalities such as physical, mental, social and emotional disorders occur. These children with special needs also have different characteristics from one another or have differences according to the type of disorder experienced by the child. According to Mulyono (child expert) he stated that a child with special needs (ABK) is a child who is included and classified as disabled or who has disabilities. In its current development, children with disabilities have changed into extraordinary disorders or special needs. However, in its group, there are several levels that can be understood. The following are the general characteristics of children with special needs: 1. Difficulty in Communication When a child experiences this, adaptive behavior will be disrupted, especially when they communicate. Where ABK often have speech barriers and have difficulty speaking even though they are adults. Their speech and choice of words that are often heard are not and do not use the right words. Communication is indeed a problem for many people, even when humans have problems, communication is the first thing that is easily disturbed. For that, communication can be an effective way to detect whether your child is a child with special needs or not. 2. Learning Difficulties Children with learning difficulties are individuals who have disorders in one or more basic psychological abilities. Not only that, usually their brain waves are also disturbed, causing the child to have an IQ that is only average or slightly above average. Usually, special needs are categorized as moderate, severe or mild from the IQ they have. 3. Physical Disorders Physically and medically, generally some have physical and medical conditions that are very different from most children. For example, if he has special needs, he will experience complications with other body organs. This often happens, considering that these children often occur due to imperfect division during pregnancy. Physical disorders can be physical disabilities or illnesses in the form of complications. 4. Being defiant Don't be surprised if children with special needs are often defiant. How to Eliminate Selfishness in children is difficult, let alone children with special needs who find it difficult to distinguish between danger or not, wrong or not and so on. The causes of Child Delinquency are very common, but for children with special needs it has become their characteristic. 5. Emotional The emotions of children with special needs are not only temperamental and easily angered but also other things happen. If viewed emotionally, they often fall into conditions of loneliness, depression and also things like despair, feeling alone and annoyed with others for no reason if they are in a bad mood. This is where the role of the family and parents is to be able to control it. The Role of the Family in the Education of Children with Special Needs must be even more extra. 6. Difficulty Writing or Reading In some cases, children with special needs have difficulty expressing their thoughts in writing and cannot read. It is difficult to hold a pen or pencil that is used correctly. The way they hold the writing tool is often too close or almost attached to the paper and often have problems when reading books or writing, this is an example of a child with special needs with Dyslexia Characteristics. 7. Not Understanding Direction Children with special needs have difficulty digesting their own logic. Sometimes they experience disorientation, such as disorientation of time or direction. The child is often confused when asked what time it is, it is possible that he only remembers the language that was taught such as 6 pm he calls evening or afternoon, but at 4 o'clock when the sun sets he will not say 4 o'clock but still afternoon. He is also unable to read and understand maps or directions well. 8. Behaving According to Habits Children with special needs, especially those with autism, are very concerned with the order or routine or daily habits. When their ritual changes, for example after eating they become bathing or vice versa after eating they have to exercise first then bathe, then they will become restless, anxious if the routine changes or is disturbed. Autistic children feel that there is something wrong with this and often they don't like it. 9. Likes to Imitate Liking to imitate or parrot (echolalia) is one of the characteristics of special needs. Abnormal Psychology explains that there are many characteristics that can be understood or understood by parents to be able to assess whether their child has special needs or not. One of them is imitation. All children do like to imitate, but there are some children with special needs who, when they like to imitate, can memorize the words or songs without understanding their meaning. They don't know what is being sung or talked about, as long as they like and remember, they will continue to do it. 10. Talking Non-Stop Some children with special needs like to babble meaninglessly over and over again. It will be dangerous if this conversation includes language that should not be spoken or is prohibited. Because children like this often argue and do not want to obey orders that are prohibited. There are also those who use language that cannot be understood by others. Talking is not used as a means of communication but for their satisfaction. 11. Acting Nervous When children with special needs feel anxious, they will do strange things, just like normal people, only they are more random. Such as mouth movements such as sucking fingers and also biting fingers and sticking out their tongues. Strange movements around the hair such as rubbing hair, pulling or scratching hair without them realizing it. 12. Jealous of Others Children with special needs still think and feel like toddlers. An attitude of envy that always feels unhappy when other people are happy or get something beneficial. Especially if it is something he likes, then as other people he will be pursued mercilessly. Special needs children need everything that is really specific and also clear. Try to discuss specific topics with them and don't float because they can't understand and you can't explore their way of communicating well. For example, if you want to talk about a movie, just focus on the title of the movie and what the story is like, don't combine the two. 13. High Sensitivity They don't understand what is being talked about or general commands that they can't carry out. However, special needs children can be very sensitive or insensitive to things that stimulate such as touch, light, or sound (for example, not liking loud noises or only responding to very loud noises, also called sensory integration disorders). There are also those who even feel disturbed if their friends only clap, this is because of high sensitivity. 14. Triggered Without Reason Crying, laughing, or laughing for no known reason or at the wrong time is a subscription for children with special needs. They have difficulty controlling their emotions so they just let out expressions that should not be used such as getting angry for no reason, unclear, bad moods that eventually affect everyone and others. 15. Introvert When a child with special needs gets a pleasant and pampering environment, they will feel comfortable and not develop well. They can be affected so that there is an inability to adjust mentally and emotionally. In addition, there are some children with special needs who do show more neurotic conditions, for example, they have problems when they are in a crowded environment or many strangers and they can become people with an introverted nature. 16. Prejudice Children with special needs cannot think complicatedly but they can be prejudiced. Some of them like to interpret negatively, there is jealousy and prejudice because they are not treated fairly so that it triggers their random anger that is unpredictable and less able to control their emotions. Even though it could be just their prediction or their prejudice. 17. Self-Harm Why should children with special needs be accompanied, because they do not understand what is dangerous or not dangerous. There are some self-harming behaviors when children are younger. Although the level is not high, such as scratching or hitting themselves and for pre-teens and teenagers can cut their skin or burn. If this happens, parents must supervise their children seriously and 24 hours. Do not often ignore this behavior, even though they are children with special needs, they are not allowed to do this. The special characteristics of children with special needs include: • Characteristics of Blindness, there are abnormalities in the sense of sight, The academic abilities of blind children are no different from normal children in general. Motoric, less able to do general mobility and Social-emotional, easily offended and verbalism, namely being able to talk but not knowing in reality. • Characteristics of Deafness, in physical children who experience disorders in their hearing organs, at birth there are no abnormalities in the child, Academic abilities, no different from the condition of normal children in general. Often deaf children lack good motor balance. Social-emotional, often show excessive suspicion, easily offended. • Characteristics of Physical Disabilities in physical children with disabilities, clearly show abnormalities both physically and motorically. Academic ability, for mild disabilities is no different from normal children in general. While for severe disabilities, especially for children who experience neuro-muscular disorders, it is often accompanied by mental retardation. Motor, many disabilities experience motor disorders, both gross and fine motor skills. Social-emotional, children with disabilities tend to feel inferior (inferior) in socializing with others. • Characteristics of Mentally Disabled Children in general according to James D. Page (Amin, 1995:34-37) are characterized in terms of: intelligence, social, mental function, drive and emotion, personality and organism. In achieving the level of intelligence for mental disabilities, it is always below average with children of the same age, as well as the development of intelligence is very limited. They are only able to reach the mental age level of the mental age of elementary school children in grade IV, or grade II, some are even able to reach the mental age level of preschool children. In terms of learning, it is difficult to understand problems. Abstract problems and the way of learning is mostly rote learning rather than understanding. In addition, they have difficulty concentrating, their attention span is very narrow and quickly switches so they are less resilient in facing tasks. Forgetful and have difficulty expressing a memory again, are less able to make associations and have difficulty making new creations. In language skills, vocabulary is very limited, especially abstract words. In children whose mental retardation is getting worse, many experience speech disorders due to articulation defects and problems in sound formation. The personality of mentally retarded children from various studies by Leahy, Balla, and Zigler (Hallahan & Kauffman, 1988:69) that children who feel retarded do not believe in their abilities, are unable to control and direct themselves so that they depend more on external parties (external locus of control). They are unable to direct themselves so that everything that happens to them depends on external direction • The prominent characteristics of gifted children as expressed by Mulyono (1994), in this are: 1. Intellectual characteristics, fast in learning, high curiosity, long enough concentration, have high competitiveness, 2. Social-emotional characteristics, easy to get along with or adapt to new environments, have leadership qualities towards peers, are honest, and have tolerance and are able to control emotions, 3. Physical-health characteristics, attractive appearance, have good resistance to disease, can maintain a clean and neat physical appearance. • The characteristics or special traits that appear in children with learning difficulties are generally only detected after children aged 8-9 years or grades 3-4 of elementary school enter the academic learning difficulties group, this is due to the difficulty of recognizing children's characteristics early on. The characteristics that can be observed are the gap (discrepancy) between the child's potential and achievements (academic) and the development achieved, this gap is at least 2 academic levels or 2 years of development. Having difficulties in one academic area/development that is lagging behind compared to other academic areas/development that the child has (intra-individual differences).