July 30, 2018, Charleston, SC Post and Courier: Special needs children in Charleston learn to focus with yoga at Trident Health https://www.postandcourier.com/health/special-needs-children-in-charleston-learn-to-focus-with-yoga/article_4656df24-90d5-11e8-8497-976f4195cffa.html …Cyrus was one of a handful of children with special needs who came to Trident Health’s campus Tuesday morning to learn the basics of yoga. A Trident Health occupational therapist guided them through the moves, from mountain pose to downward dog, to runners pose and back to mountain pose, just like a traditional yoga class. Parents of children with special needs know it is often difficult for them to focus, deal with change and to calm themselves when they’re met with challenges. … Research about yoga’s benefits for special needs children is scarce but growing. One review published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry found yoga can improve how children do in school, alleviate attention problems and relieve stress, and that it does have benefits for children with special needs…. With apraxia, a motor speech disorder, Cyrus has trouble voicing his thoughts. “He loves playing with other kids. He just can’t communicate with them very well, Dilley said. Schneider said each of the students in the class have sensory processing issues. Most parents of children with special needs want them to have normal experiences and relationships, she said. Those opportunities can be hard to come by…. The classes are geared toward children with autism, cerebral palsy and ADD or ADHD. But the problems the pupils are facing vary widely.
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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