If everyone could simply agree on what is meant by the various terms used to describe brain-injured children, we'd be a long way along the road to solving such problems.



Confusion of terminology is certainly a problem in the world of the brain-injured child. If you are the parent of a brain-injured child, you have surely heard all of the words Brain-damaged, Mentally Retarded, Mentally Deficient, Cerebral-palsied, Epileptic, Autistic, Athetoid, or Hyperactive. It is quite possible that different specialists have given your child most or even all of these names.

A good example is the very popular term "mental retardation." "Every two minutes a child is born afflicted with mental retardation." "Fight mental retardation." "Give money for research into the cause of mental retardation." "This child is a victim of mental retardation."

Doesn't all this leave the impression that there is a disease called "mental retardation?" There is no such disease. Mental retardation is a symptom and, like most other symptoms, is a symptom of many very different diseases. One can have the symptom, mental retardation, because his mother and father have incompatible Rh factors. One can have the symptom, mental retardation, because he got hit by an automobile, and so on through a hundred very different diseases and injuries that can result in the symptom of severe, moderate, or mild mental retardation.

Since it seemed very harsh to tell a parent that her child was a moron, idiot or imbecile, society invented a euphemism, "mental retardation". This term, in a literal sense, was a splendid choice, which labeled the problem quite well. It is what was eventually done with this good, but symptomatic, term which was the problem. It did not take parents long to come to the conclusion that it was not a compliment to be told that their child was mentally retarded and that what this term really meant was that their child was a moron, idiot, or imbecile.

The parents were not fooled, but now professionals had at least two diseases, idiocy and mental retardation.

When we speak of a brain-injured child, we mean any child who has had something happen to hurt the brain. That something may occur at any time. It may occur at conception, or a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, or nine months after conception. It may also happen seventy years after birth, only then he is called a brain-injured adult. Sometimes, brain-injured children will be given labels by medical professionals, educators or society. Those labels are not diseases but symptoms of one problem - brain injury.

These brain-injured children are wonderful kids, they need and deserve our help. We now know that a program of neurological organization will yield results in most brain-injured children. In the future, perhaps there will be answers for all brain-injured children.