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Many parents who have a child with a disability have higher levels of stress and experience challenges coping with the responsibilities of raising a child with a disability. The purpose of the study was to qualitatively explore the impact of sport participation by children on parental stress and coping skills. Through focus group interviews with 13 parents who had a child with disability, the participants felt a sense of social support through connecting with other parents while their child participated in the sport classes. The sport classes provided developmentally appropriate activities, which promotes self-empowerment and independency within the children. Keywords: Respite; children with disability; stress; coping skills, Introduction Parenting a child with a disability is challenging because of the day-to-day responsibilities and time commitment required to meet the needs of children in a family unit with and [...]

Although children with Williams syndrome (WS) are reported to show a strong motivation towards social interaction, evidence suggests many experience difficulties with peer relations. Less is known regarding the characteristics of such difficulties. Parents and teachers of 21 children with WS (7- to 16 years) completed questionnaires measuring aspects of social functioning and peer interactions. Parents and teachers reported that children with WS demonstrated significantly greater peer problems than population norms, including difficulties sustaining friendships and increased social exclusion. More substantial social functioning difficulties were associated with greater peer relation problems. The study provides multi-informant evidence of peer relationship difficulties in children with WS that require further consideration within the broader WS social phenotype., Author(s): Amanda E. Gillooly [sup.1] [sup.3] , Deborah M. Riby [sup.2] , Kevin Durkin [sup.3] , Sinéad M. Rhodes [sup.4] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.8756.c, 0000 0001 2193 314X, Institute of [...]

Aim: To examine the impact of participation in an adaptive ski and snowboard program on Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQL). Methods: Participants completed the KIDSCREEN-52 HRQL questionnaire prior to and upon completion of a winter sport season. The questionnaire was distributed for five seasons. Participants who completed three or more years were further analyzed as a long-term cohort. Results: Seventy-six athletes met inclusion criteria. After one year, athletes demonstrated significant improvement in physical well-being and bullying; guardians reported improvement in six of the 10 HRQL domains. Twenty-nine athletes met criteria for the long-term cohort, reporting significant improvements in financial resources, peers and social support, and bullying, but a significant decrease in self-perception. Parents reported improvements in financial resources and bullying. Conclusions: Perceived changes in HRQL of children with disabilities are evident after one season of participation, and guardians are more likely to report significant improvements than child-athletes. Keywords: Adaptive recreation, adaptive sports, cerebral palsy, disabilities, quality of life, skiing, Introduction The positive physical, psychological, and social benefits of sports participation in child-athletes are well documented. Despite demonstrated benefits of physical activity, studies have found that children with cerebral palsy [...]

Inclusive Physical Activity Center (IPAC) is a community-based program that aims to include children with special needs together with their peers within sport activities. This project was developed on the basis of Bronfenbrenner's socioecological theory (1976) and covers actors who play an important role in the lives of children with special needs such as parents, peers, teachers and volunteers. The Center includes children with andwithoutdisabilities,supportservices, community based programs and school awareness programs. All participants with special needs are included with their peers without disabilities with the exception the infant group (aged 0-2) and two groups of children with severe disabilities. In IPAC, physical activity training is conducted in 90-minute sessions with some groups attending twice a week and others attending three times a week. School awareness programs including in 'Paralympic School Days,' and 'Get into it! Special Olympics' helps to create an accepting and supportive school environment. Community-based activities are out-of-school activities focusing on social inclusion by bringing students from all levels of the school system together with children with special needs via special days on disability awareness such activities. In-service PE teachers and APA graduate students from a local take an active role to implement all IPAC programs to promote awareness and understanding of disability. IPAC plays an important role in creating an acceptable and supportive atmosphere for people with disabilities in the community. Key Words: Special education, physical activity, inclusion, Turkey, 'I am very happy here. It should be a miracle. It is like paradise, I can live here with my friends throughout my life.' Fourth Grade Student Fuat Koprulu Primary [...]

In Turkey, there are many kinds of educational environments for children with disabilities. Some of these are inclusive; others are special education classes within the mainstream schools. A third category includes separate, special education schools. There are also Special Education and Rehabilitation Centers (SERC) that provide support to all children including those with severe disabilities. While there are mandatory employees such as physical therapists, child development specialists, psychologists and special education teachers, there are no physical education or adapted physical education teachers included as part of the special education teams in the rehabilitation centers. As a result, children placed in the centers receive little attention in the area of physical education. This article describes the experiences of children and their families involved with the 'Active Life Center' in Istanbul, Turkey as well as the programs and research initiatives associated with the center. Founded in 2012, the center is designed to support the rights of children with disabilities to participate in sport and physical activity through a variety of programs. Keywords: special education; rehabilitation centers; Active Life Center; Turkey, 'My daughter is now going to the park by running. Before, she hardly ever walked. When I tell her we are going to the park, she gets very excited. These [...]

Children with disabilities play less often and demonstrate fewer varied pretend play behaviors than children with typical development. A multiple-probe design was used to examine the relation between teachers' use of the system of least prompts and contingent imitation and the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of pretend play and related behaviors by four children with disabilities. Results indicated the teachers' use of the intervention package was functionally related to increases in the children's frequency and diversity of pretend play and related behaviors. Children also maintained responses in sessions without prompts and generalized across toys and contexts. The findings replicate previous studies on adult prompting of pretend play and extend the literature by assessing generalization of children's pretend play across contexts and measuring intervention and implementation fidelity. Overall, this study provides a strong argument for engaging in systematic instruction of play, including pretend play, for children who do not display such behaviors., The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights asserted that play is the right of every child because it 'is essential to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional wellbeing of [...]

The purpose of this study was to examine the risk and protective factors of peer victimization among young children with disabilities. This study analyzed data from the Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study (n = 1,130) to test a path model that included child, family, and school characteristics at Year 1 and peer-relation difficulties and social skills at Year 2 to predict peer victimization among children with disabilities at Year 3. Children's family and school factors had direct effects on children's poorer social behaviors and language development, which had direct effects on peer-relation difficulties, which in turn increased peer victimization. Children's prosocial skill development, facilitated by children's receptive language ability, protects children with disabilities from peer victimization. Intervention implications are discussed., Peer victimization is a serious social problem that negatively affects children's psychosocial development and adjustment in schools, and may have lasting effects for victims. Peer victimization typically be comes increasingly [...]

Over the past six decades, affirmative action/diversity initiatives have imposed racial proportionality in virtually every domain of American life, from preschool programming to employment in American workplaces. This paper is essentially based around Steven Farron's persuasive evidence that ethnic-based enterprises--typically endorsed uncritically by institutions which have seemingly lost their historic societal bearings--have proven not only non-helpful, but counterproductive. Throughout, empirical evidence of Farron and other investigators focuses on two primary misconceptions underlying failure of programs which deemphasized color-blind equality: that standardized tests lack predictive validity and that efforts to implement racial proportionality can ignore the impact of biophysical and broad ecological forces. Key Words: Affirmative action/diversity; African American; Hispanic; whites; civil rights; color-blind; victimization; standardized tests; biophysical; broad ecological influences; NAACP; Title I, Head Start and No Child Left Behind; gifted and mildly mentally retarded children; tracking: international competitiveness., Holding B.A. and Ph.D degrees from Columbia University as a professor of classics at South Africa's University of Witwaterstrand, Steven Farron published over 20 articles and a book in his [...]