KUCHING: The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has been unsettling on mothers and since the day online lessons were introduced by the Ministry of Education (MoE).
Juggling between daily work and childcare, the closure of schools has been seen as an unfavourable move, especially by mothers with special needs children.
Evahaizura Husaini, mother of seven-year-old autistic boy Dzikra Musyrif, said it was not easy for her now to handle her child, who has had to change his familiar routine during the pandemic.
Dzikra, like other children with special needs, attended speech therapy and occupational therapy at two centres prior to the pandemic.
The daily routine included get familiar with his learning environment, and teachers and therapists.
Evahaizura said life was much easier then as she had developed strict routines on routine boards for Dzikra to keep him calm.
“For instance, the daily schedules are labelled with events will use words like dress for school, therapy and swimming lesson,” Evahaizura told New Sarawak Tribune recently.
But these routines are now “out of the space”. Since Covid-19 hit the world, parents like Evahaizura have had to struggle to help their autistic children cope with new learning environments.
“The loss of routine, therapy sessions been put on hold, coupled with online learning, is challenging for all parents, including those with special needs children.
“For them, adjusting to a new routine is not easy. They’ll whine, complain and avoid. They get very restless when I try to get them to do their work.
“Generally, his speech therapy is meant to help him use the iPad to ask for what he wants. But when a parent tries to do this with him, Dzikra will do other things instead.
“The virtual learning has led to poor sleeping habit.”
Another mother, Aishah Bujang, said her son had tantrums during the earlier phase of the movement control order (MCO).
“The MCO was also a trigger as he was unable to go out in public, something he could not tolerate.
“He would complain that he feels lonely and bored because I couldn’t take him for a walk to the nearby shop during the MCO,” she said of her son Mohamad Adi Nasri, 12, who has mild autism.
During the relaxation of the MCO, Aishah said she allowed Adi to play outside under her watchful eyes. Usually, she said she would bring him outdoors at least twice daily such as running along the pavement in front of their block.
Leaving the house, Aishah stressed, was vital for those with special needs as they had the tendency to be either oversensitive or desensitised to the physical environment.
“For me, a child with autism needs to practice stimulating their sensory, which is different from playing indoors. Exposure is necessary to stimulate his sensory.”
Asked whether online learning would be the best for Adi, Aishah said home-based learning had not effectively replaced face-to-face interaction.
“In school, everything he did was hands on. Now, it is limited to what’s taught onscreen, like reading comprehension and numeracy.”
