CHILDREN'S BOOKS AS A STARTING POINT FOR OTHER ACTIVITIES
The very act of reading is very difficult for most children who are handicapped sensorily or mentally. Their need for artistic experience is just as great as that of other children. Like other children, they should have the opportunities for play and development, but many of them do not have the imagination needed to start playing or to try to create something without help. And the adults in their environment are a cross section of the population wherein only a few have surplus energy to be imaginative in their play with children. However, picture books, stories and songs are sources of inspiration. Libraries have often provided enjoyment for many handicapped children when they have invited them to storytelling sessions, slide shown from picture books, puppetry or films. First and foremost it has meant social contact and experiences and something to talk about afterwards.
In addition to speech as a tool in communication, we can gesticulate and use mimicry to give more life to the story in the books. Or we can play music which suits the pictures. It is far from easy to find out for oneself the best means to activate children. But pictures in books can give both children and adults ideas. We can make the persons that we find in the books, either draw them or fashion puppets of them. Puppetry has proved to be especially beneficial to many of the mentally retarded. Simple picture books with a lot of movement in the pictures (for instance books by the Ezra Jack Keats and Eric Carle) can also inspire the children to movement and perhaps to dance the whole story of the picture book.
Music and dance have often proved to be the prelude to language learning, contact and mental development. It happens that mentally retarded children know the songs and rhymes by heart even though they have never used speech for other purposes. Music and songs have in some cases liberated a speech which was latent. Even if the words are not always understood, the rhythm and melodies make the children feel good and give them as a result a sense of self esteem as to their own capabilities. Drama and other creative activities, such as drawing, painting, modeling, movement and music often provide the children outlets for such moods and feelings which they otherwise have had to keep to themselves. In this process children's books can be sources of inspiration. If emotional needs are not satisfied, the child's intellectual development and his entire personality may be damaged.
In early childhood it is not unusual that autistic and brain-damaged children have severe restless periods. Singing brain-damaged children have severe restless periods. Singing softly to them and playing rhythmical music calms them. Best of all for this purpose are lullabyes and folk songs.
Jean Vanier, the founder and director of the l'Arche movement says:
| "Since their infancy almost all the handicapped have been wounded not only organically but by so many looks of pity, disdain and indifference that have made them feel worthless and inferior and have destroyed any confidence they may have had in themselves". |
Most of us gravely underrate intellectually, emotionally and socially those who have no verbal language or very little of it, or who have no reading faculties. Handicapped children need to feel they are of value, that they have something to offer, that they are part of a community. Reading aloud, singing, music, dancing and other creative activities open up for them the joys of fellowship.