Freedom and Special Needs.

Does having special needs means you are no longer free? Does being dependant on somebody mean you are now their slave? The reason these thoughts come to me is because in a recent meeting a mother of a 15 plus years old autistic boy said that her son's daily life was carefully monitored, as left to himself, he would either do nothing or something inappropriate. This was in a discussion where the 'what after us?' question was being discussed. Obviously the mother felt, probably like many parents of autistic children that keeping their wards engaged in meaningful activity was an absolute must.
The mother in questioned was asked if she had ever given a choice to her son, on what he wanted to do and she said, him being non-verbal and non expressive, such a situation was not practical. Yes, again, left unmonitored, he would resort to meaningless activities, she said.

This is not an unusual condition among special families. Very few families actually even think that their special kids might have a choice in the matter of what should be in their lives, which school, class, therapy, sports, hobbies or social occasions they want to be part of. Almost all think, the child is not smart enough to make a choice. Yet all the parents ever want is for their children to show a glimmer of intelligence and motivation. Isn't intelligence and freedom deeply connected? Can intelligence flourish without choice?

When we ask our neurotypicals to work towards various competitive exams, we know that the ultimate motivation has to come from within the child, to focus, work diligently over many months, if a positive outcome is to be the effect. Then why don't we give the same rope to special children? Really listening and accepting their choices is fundamental to their being motivated to do any work, to improving themselves. A special child is not a computer to be programmed. He comes with his likes and dislikes, abilities and disabilities, desires and needs. We have to slowly learn and adjust ourselves to all of them if we want the child to be a rounded adult.

We want desperately for the special needs adult to be independent, but rob every moment of freedom and 'channelize'  the child in some activity or another. Is it a big surprise that the adult can never know what he wants to do, because he was never given a chance to express and fructify what he really for himself ever. Striking a balance between freedom and rational restrictions is a must in good parenting. We cannot be 'pleaser' parent, and some boundaries have to be drawn. But then, freedom to choose harmless things, freedom to err in choices, freedom to pick and move on to make better choices, aren't all this what all of life is really about? Shouldn't we start training our special needs children to actually exercise this freedom and express themselves strongly, without an apology.

Morphic Fields, Morphic Resonance, Special needs and human Evolution- How I integrate these ideas.

Morphic Fields, a scientific phenomenon brought to the forefront by famous evolutionary biologist Rupert Sheldrake, refers to a ‘form’ making ‘plan’ that exists in the electro magnetic atmosphere surrounding anything that is growing. From the formation of a tree from a single seed, or a human baby from an embryo, Sheldrake suggests there exists a morphic field in which the prototype ‘plan’ of the new being already exists which helps in forming it.
In an experiment in which the egg of a newt was tied half way and thus destroyed, it was seen that the newt still fully developed in the other half, even though that half probably did not have all the genetic information to fully form the newt. Sheldrake suggests, take for example the cells in the human embryo, that form hands, are the same as those that form the legs too, but then how is it that there is so much difference in shape and appearance between hand and legs? What causes this difference to arise? Sheldrake says that the human embryo is not forming on the basis of genes alone- in fact the gene theory is now debunked since man has the same number of genes as a worm, rather it’s the morphic field surrounding the embryo that actually helps in forming it.

But what are these fields? Can they be detected? Sheldrake suggests that these fields are like magnetic fields around magnets, a phenomenon easily depicted by iron fillings. But there are no ‘iron fillings’ yet discovered that can prove morphic fields. This matter can only be inferred from what is happening around us.

Today a very large number of children born, seem to have many missing links and seem to need a lot of assistance in their development and support, even in their adult life. Views for this preponderance varies from that these are mistakes of nature to that these are higher souls, taking birth to pull the hapless parent to a higher vibration. That is, the views vary from rank materialism to spirituality. But what is really the truth?

Statistics reveal that the rate of autism is now 1 in every 55 children. It seems odd that nature would make so many mistakes. Or that so many children would come as ‘bad karma’ for their parents.

Is it possible that these special needs children, not just who are autistic, but all those other syndromes, dyslexics and other learning impaired children be by products nature’s experiments to develop a more evolved form of humanity?
We parents of special children notice certain commonalities that exist in our children pan special needs, like their having unconditional love, a self sufficient state of inner calm, non-ambitiousness, non-competitiveness, living in the now, authentic living, love for the arts, love for nature, tolerance for others etc. Yet its also true that these children are learning impaired. But time and again some mothers who worked diligently for years with these children have been able to teach and improve this aspect. Today there are enough occupation therapists, special educators and doctors working on improving these children’s attention spans, skills and knowledge. Yet only a marginal few can claim to have made a special child fully independent. Most will remain dependant on their families for survival, till the end.
So how can one say Nature’s experiments are successful? How can a dependant form of a humanity be good?
That is true, but special needs children are just the evolving humanity. With each generation, mothers and professionals working on various techniques with consistency and diligence are creating morphic fields which make learning easier for future special children. We see this in the new babies that are born today who seem hardwired to know how to use their parents’ smart phones. Only morphic fields can explain this new skill in babies. Morphic resonance suggest that if something has occurred once, its easier for it to occur again. For example at one point it was a great human feat to conquer the Everest. Today there appears to be a queue to reach the same exalted peak! Yes better equipments are one reason, but improvement in human skills for this task is also one reason, which may be due to morphic resonance.
Today world over, almost every problem has a support group rallying around it, be it cancer or acid survivors or domestic abuse victims. The internet is the age of communities. It’s the age where learning and sharing has become a cake walk. At one point, knowledge was a premium, but today its only a click away. People are sharing solutions to their difficulties like never before. Morphic resonance is changing humanity at an unprecedented rate.

In the next few hundred years, its may not be that a ‘cure’ for autism will be detected, but what may happen is that the new autistic child will not be so learning impaired, will have all those great qualities discussed earlier, like non competitiveness etc, along with abilities which make him or her completely self-reliant and independent. What am suggesting is that nature seems to working on developing the ‘qualities’ in human beings, not just in developing the human intelligence. Because its these qualities that provide a sustainable life for the planet. For the time being, in nature’s experiments, the children appear to have enhanced inner qualities but poor in survival needs of learning and adapting to the environment.
This is where the very important role of the special mother comes in.
Today’s hardworking conscientious special mother, is through the patterns that she creates in the morphic fields making the lives of all future special moms easier. Future special children will learn faster, adapt quicker, the sensorial sensitivities may reduce. It may seem horrifying to some that an entire race may become ‘autistic’ but that is because we define autism in its deficiencies, if the deficiencies are removed and the great qualities still exist, that race would probably be the first truly spiritually peaceful race on earth! But we are many tens of thousands of years away from that.
So even if the child does not develop at satisfactory pace, may never be fully independent, special moms have a unique role in evolution according to me and every effort towards improvement is meaningful and useful.

Reading material- A New Science of Life' - By Rupert Sheldrake.

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