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Understanding Your Handicapped Child is a small, slim, 80-page volume of clear, large print and it has the strength of simplicity in both style and presentation, while being about a complex and difficult subject.
It is, as the title suggests, directed towards parents who have the difficult emotional and practical task of bringing up a child who suffers
from a disability and therefore faces not only the ordinary traumas and vulnerability of life that confront each one of us but also an increased vulnerability in a not always sympathetic world. In the introduction, the author says,
Parents have hopes and plans for each child, that, on the whole, are properly suited to them — whatever their difficulties and strengths. This book is to help you be in even more touch with your child's unique problems and potential.
If you have a child with a handicap or disability, this book is intended to strengthen your ability to deal with the emotional experiences involved. You are not alone however much it feels like that.
Valerie Sinason never strays from placing disability within the context of normality, that is the context of normal, universal human experience, which can be, might have to be, and perhaps unconsciously is, faced by each one of us ‘regardless of race, religion, class, economic or educational position’. The sense of particularity and the attempt to address special and unique needs while at the same time normalizing those is strengthened by the fact that this book appears in a series of well-presented, short and accessible books for parents on understanding children at differing stages of development.
The voice of the author is sensitive, hopeful and helpfully authoritative and the book carries with it a real attempt to provide, at many levels. Within the text she intelligently and practically informs the reader with meaningful statistics. She cites the facts that ‘Within the United Kingdom there are 360,000 children born with disabilities. In the world, over 1% of all