Inside All, There Is

HopeBy: Kaitlyn Little, Ashlyn Hubbert,

and Summer Tucker

Child Disabilities • Autism

• Deaf / Blindness

• ADHD

• Learning disabilities

• Dyslexia

• Cerebral Palsy

• Bipolar Disorder

• Turrets Syndrome

Autism • Autism causes kids to

experience the world differently from the way most other kids do. It's hard for kids with autism to talk with other people and express themselves using words. Kids who have autism usually keep to themselves and many can't communicate without special help. A kid who has autism also has trouble linking words to their meanings. Imagine trying to understand what your mom is saying if you didn't know what her words really mean. It is doubly frustrating then if a kid can't come up with the right words to express his or her own thoughts.

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Deaf and Blindness•Deaf: On average, one Australian child is identified with

impaired hearing every day. 1 in 1000 babies is born with significant hearing loss. By school age, 2 in every 1000 children will have been identified with hearing loss. By the end of secondary school, more than 3 out of every 1000 children will require assistance because of hearing loss. Newborns identified with hearing loss have a very hard time learning to speak.

•Blindness: Vision impairment affects more than 1 in 2500 children in Australia. 4 out of every 10,000 children born in Australia will be diagnosed with severe vision impairment or blindness by their first birthday but there are no accurate statistics to verify this figure. The number of blind or vision impaired children enrolled in RIDBC programs has doubled in the last 7 years. 8.6 per cent of families of children with vision impairment are from non-English speaking backgrounds. Vision impairment often is associated with other disabilities.Blind children face challenges doing every day things we take for granted like reading. Braille is vital to literacy for many children who are blind. Every year, at least 30 teachers and professionals to work with children who are deaf or blind. There are an estimated 1.5 million blind children world wide.

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Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

•ADHD:Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, also known as ADHD, is a condition that makes it difficult for people to control their attention and behavior. The disorder is primarily characterized by levels of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity and usually appears before age seven. ADHD symptoms can show up in various situations, such as in the college classroom, and may create difficulties getting work done. Symptoms may also affect relationships with friends and family.

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Learning Disabilities

• Learning disabilities are problems that affect the brain's ability to receive, process, analyze, or store information. These problems can make it difficult for a student to learn as quickly as someone who isn't affected by learning disabilities. There are many kinds of learning disabilities. Most students affected by learning disabilities have more than one kind. Certain kinds of learning disabilities can interfere with a person's ability to concentrate or focus and can cause someone's mind to wander too much. Other learning disabilities can make it difficult for a student to read, write, spell, or solve math problems. Take the simple act of looking at a picture, for example: Our brains not only have to form the lines into an image, they also have to recognize what the image stands for, relate that image to other facts stored in our memories, and then store this new information. It's the same thing with speech - we have to recognize the words, interpret the meaning, and figure out the significance of the statement to us. Many of these activities take place in separate parts of the brain, and it's up to our minds to link them all together.

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Dyslexia • Dyslexia has been around for a long time and has been defined in different ways. For example, in 1968, the World Federation of Neurologists defined dyslexia as "a disorder in children who, despite conventional classroom experience, fail to attain the language skills of reading, writing, and spelling commensurate with their intellectual abilities." According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, dyslexia is a learning disability that can hinder a person's ability to read, write, spell, and sometimes speak. Dyslexia is the most common learning disability in children and persists throughout life. The severity of dyslexia can vary from mild to severe. The sooner dyslexia is treated, the more favorable the outcome; however, it is never too late for people with dyslexia to learn to improve their language skills.

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Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a disorder that affects muscle tone, movement,

and motor skills (the ability to move in a coordinated and purposeful

way). Cerebral palsy can also lead to other health issues, including

vision, hearing, and speech problems, and learning disabilities.

CP is usually caused by brain damage that occurs before or

during a child's birth, or during the first 3 to 5 years of a child's life.

There is no cure for CP, but treatment, therapy, special

equipment, and, in some cases, surgery can help a child who is

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Bipolar Disorder• When children older than age 6 or teens have bipolar disorder, they have mood swings with extreme ups and downs. When they are up, they have brief, intense outbursts or feel irritable (mania) several times almost every day. When they are down, they feel depressed and sad.In the past, experts thought bipolar disorder was the same in children and adults. But recent studies of children and teens show that their symptoms are different than those of adults, and they need different treatment.

• What causes bipolar disorder?

• Experts don't fully understand what causes bipolar disorder. It seems to run in families. Your child has a greater risk of having it if a close family member such as a parent, grandparent, brother, or sister has it. Parents may wonder what they did to cause their child to have bipolar disorder. But there is nothing a parent can do to cause or prevent it.

• What are the symptoms?• Children and teens with bipolar disorder have mood swings

with extreme ups (mania) and downs (depression). These intense moods quickly change from one extreme to another without a clear reason. Some children may briefly return to a normal mood between extremes. Many children change continuously between mania and depression, sometimes several times in the same day. Sometimes children with bipolar disorder have symptoms of both mania and depression at the same time. Table Of Contents

Turrets Syndrome• The cause of turrets syndrome is unknown, although some studies suggest that the tics in turrets syndrome are caused by an increased amount of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. A neurotransmitter is a chemical found in the brain that helps to transmit information from one brain cell to another. An autosomal dominant disorder results from a change in one copy of a pair of genes. Individuals with an autosomal dominant disorder have a 50% chance of passing on the changed gene to their children. Decreased penetrance means that not all people who inherit the changed gene will develop symptoms. There is some evidence that females who inherit the turrets syndrome gene have a 70% chance of exhibiting symptoms and males have a 99% chance of having symptoms. It has been suggested that other genetic and environmental factors may play a role in the development of symptoms in people who inherit the changed gene, but none have been discovered. Some researchers believe that turrets syndrome has different causes in different individuals or is caused by changes in more than one gene, although these theories are less substantiated. Further research is needed to establish the cause of turrets syndrome.

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