Intervention Plan, Essay Example

Outline

1. Summarize your thoughts about why he is unable to make friends and how his disabilities interfere with his social development
2. List some possible solutions for your work with him, for what his parents can do, and for what his kindergarten teacher can do once he is in school
3. Offer some suggestions for how you can evaluate his monthly, social progress.

Psychology: Intervention Plan

Summarize your thoughts about why he is unable to make friends and how his disabilities interfere with his social development.

Usually, children who display physical disabilities, whether it has to do with visual, auditory, muscular or any other type they are faced with three development task impairments. These include cognitive development, communication and language development as well as social and emotional development (Smith & Tyler, 2010).

Michael’s inability to make friends due his compromised hearing is due the underdevelopment of the three areas mentioned above. Studies have proven that hearing impairment does not directly affect cognitive development (Andy, 2005). However, Michael’s peculiar situation is that due to limited exposure. His cognitive progress appears to be retarded since for its expansion he would need to engage in more interaction with peers (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004).

Regarding the communication and language aspect of his growth it could be assumed that if he cannot hear words it would be difficult to interpret and reproduce it as speech since in the brain the interaction of sounds and interpretation occurs. Hence, in Michael’s situation communication is not by way of normal words/ speech interaction with his peers and he does not know their language to communicate in this way.

Evidently, Michael will struggle with Social and Emotional development because by age five he has realized that he cannot interact normally like children his age. In his world he recognized that something is not quite normal about him. Consequently, he cannot make friends just not because they do not like him, but due to his inadequate communication skills. It is difficult for him to be understood.

List some possible solutions for your work with him, for what his parents can do, and for what his kindergarten teacher can do once he is in school

• Working with Michael would necessitate first validating him as a person. It is important to point out his hearing impairment by letting him know that he is different, but that it could be overcome through scientific intervention that would help him resolve his hearing difficulty.
• His parents ought to let him be more exposed and feel the pain of children rejecting him for a while. Eventually, they will come to realize that he is different and deserves to be understood.
• They should intercede as a facilitator in educating his peers about his hearing issue so that they can adjust to the limitation.
• While doing this, arrangements for him to see an ear, nose and throat specialist to evaluate the extent of the impairment; recommending hearing aid devices must be undertaken.
• Once Michael receives the necessary devices to help in his hearing impairment; at school teachers ought to be very supportive of him until he becomes adjusted to himself as person using hearing devices ( Lieu, 2004)
• Obviously, this is different and classmates may want to taunt him about the device to create some degree of embracement. Here is where even without the device teachers ought to help Michael integrate within the school system comfortably by showing love and acceptance
• He should be allowed to participate at his level of development

Offer some suggestions for how you can evaluate his monthly, social progress.

His monthly social progress can be evaluated by establishing an agenda each month for about six months to test one aspect of Michael social development.

References

Andy Coghlan (2005-02-14). “Gene therapy is first deafness ‘cure'”. NewScientist.com News Service.

Lieu JE (2004). Speech-language and educational consequences of unilateral hearing loss in children. Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg.: 130(5); 524-30

Mitchell Ross E., Karchmer Michael A. (2004). “Chasing the mythical ten percent: Parental hearing status of deaf and hard of hearing students in the United States”. Sign Language Studies 4 (2): 138–163

Smith, D. D., & Tyler, N. C. (2010). Introduction to Special Education. Columbus: Merrill.