A Smartwatch Could Soon Give Parents a Head Start on Severe Tantrums
Plus: As IDEA turns 50, The 74 tells the story of how the special education law came to be; and deafblind programs across the nation were cut when they strayed too close to DEI
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Medical Motherhood’s news round up
Snippets of news and opinion from outlets around the world. Click the links for the full story.
• From The 74: “Before Special Ed, There Was the School-to-Asylum Pipeline. How One Lawsuit Helped End It”
[…]It was 1969. Two men from the Pennsylvania Association of Retarded Children made an appointment to meet with the young lawyer with a reputation for taking pie-in-the-sky cases more experienced attorneys wouldn’t touch. […](In the interest of historical accuracy, in portions of this article The 74 uses terminology now recognized as offensive.)
[The lawyer, Thomas] Gilhool had never heard of the organization, now known as The Arc of Pennsylvania, but he knew more than most people about Pennhurst. At the time, children could be deemed retarded for a host of reasons: for having an intellectual disability, but also for seizure disorder, cerebral palsy, birth defects, bad behavior, even not speaking fluent English.
Public school was often the first stop on a short path to institutionalization. Children would enroll, quickly be deemed “ineducable” and consigned to places like Pennhurst, where forced labor, neglect and violence often cut their lives short.
Gilhool’s brother Bob had been committed to the asylum, the attorney told his stunned guests.
[…]Eventually, they should ask the courts to close the facility. But the first task, Gilhool told his new clients, was to establish disabled children’s right to an education.
Prohibiting schools from using asylums as dumping grounds was the initial step toward shutting down the pipeline of new residents and triggering the creation of alternatives — including the classroom instruction that would help children fulfill their potential.
[…]The 1971 case Gilhool filed and won, PARC vs. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was swiftly copied by disability advocates in dozens of states. The settlement — which anticipated the sundry ways in which children like Bob Gilhool were excluded from school — became the template for one of the strongest of the era’s civil rights laws, enacted by Congress in 1975.
Fifty years after passage of what is now known as the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, it’s hard to overstate the law’s impact. Originally titled the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, but better known as Public Law 94-142, it said no child could be declared ineducable.[…]
• From MedicalXPress (Press release from the Mayo Clinic): “Smartwatch system helps parents shorten and defuse children's severe tantrums early”
Mayo Clinic researchers have developed a smartwatch-based alert system that signals parents at the earliest signs of a tantrum in children with emotional and behavioral disorders—prompting them to intervene before it intensifies.
In a new study published in JAMA Network Open, these alerts helped parents intervene within four seconds and shortened severe tantrums by an average of 11 minutes—about half the duration seen with standard therapy.
In this system, a smartwatch worn by the child detects physiological stress signals, such as rising heart rate, or changes in movement or sleep, and sends them to an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled app on the parent's smartphone. The app analyzes the data in real time and sends an alert as a cue for the parent to connect with their child.
[…]Julia Shekunov, M.D., medical director of Mayo Clinic’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Inpatient Unit and also a study co-author, says the work addresses an urgent need. “We’re seeing more children in crisis, and the severity is increasing. This system gives parents tools they can use immediately, even outside the clinic, to help their child regain control.”
Future studies will refine the system’s predictive accuracy, test it in larger groups and assess its long-term benefits in routine outpatient care.
• From The New York Times: “Born Deaf and Blind, She’s Caught in Trump’s Anti-Diversity Crusade”
[…]At the hospital three years ago, meeting the newborn who would become their daughter, Mr. Garner was the first to notice the tiny flaps of skin where her ears should be. Annie, the child they were adopting, was deaf.
Over the next few months, as they got to know their daughter, the Garners would discover more challenges, including poor vision, a developmental disability and weak muscles.
They were first-time parents, and they felt overwhelmed, thrown into an unfamiliar world they hadn’t expected. “I was out there looking for anything and everything that could help us,” said Mr. Garner, now 34.
[…]He discovered the Wisconsin Deafblind Project, a state program for the families of children with combined vision and hearing loss. It made a tremendous difference as they learned to parent Annie, the Garners said.
[…]Then in September, the Trump administration canceled the five-year, $918,000 grant for the program, which supports about 170 children in Wisconsin like Annie. It also ended a $10.5 million grant used to recruit and retain special education teachers in the state.
[…]The Garners said they were shocked that the government would cut off assistance for raising a deafblind daughter. “It seems like it should be a group of kids that everyone wants to help,” said Mr. Garner, a civil engineer. “Taking away help from deafblind kids? I don’t understand.”
The Wisconsin Deafblind Project was penalized for prioritizing “applicants from underrepresented and historically marginalized groups,” according to a letter from the Trump administration, as well as its efforts to contract with women and minority business owners or disabled veterans.[…]
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