There are many paediatric community settings in Singapore, most of these are accellerated learning programs. Its interesting though that even though the child is not delayed in any sense, the parents would send their child for 'extra practice' so their child would out shine the rest. These programs are so intense ranging from 2yr old to 16yrs old, I find my self incompetent at year 9 maths, because it was acturally calculus!
So this leads me to the question, what is cognitive developmental delay? If the expectations are so high on every child, the poor soul would get a scholding if he/she was unable to perform algebra at 12. This is the norm for a singaporean child. Incredibly scary, but these children are incredibly smart. So what if the child doesn't meet the norm? Well, they are classified as 'developmentally delayed'. The fact that they start to learn what we learnt at yr 1 when they're 2yrs old, it's not that hard for them to perform complicated equations at 12 or 13 etc. In this case, the children who are really developmentally delayed ( western classification) are handicapped and the ones that are slow to learn(but really a normal child who's just better in certain areas than others) are delvelopmentally delayed. I feel so sorry for these children, because I don't think they know what is 'play' or 'fun'.
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Wow, I find that so fascinating and disturbing at the same time. I often don't think of how widely physiotherapy would differ in cultures outside of western society, but it just goes to show how relative things can be. Like two patients who have differing tolerances to pain, they may come from different past experiences and different cultures in which the expression of pain is totally different and yet may have undergone the same procedure. I find it interesting how much emphasis is placed on these childrens' knowledge and how much knowledge seems to be valued in their society. I would find it interesting to see what physio strategies you guys would employ for children with this so called 'developmental delay' and how you would incorporate 'play' into their program.
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