Intellectual disabilities are defined in IDEA as “significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance” (Heward, 2013, p. 124).
Causation
Intellectual disabilities can effect a child’s brain development at anytime. Problems could arise prenatal, perinatal, or even postnatal. Causes are categorized into biomedical, social, behavioral, and educational factors. Biomedical factors involve genetic disorders, parental age, prematurity at birth, birth injuries, malnutrition, and brain injuries. Social factors include poverty, maternal malnutrition, domestic violence, lack of birth care and/or child care, and chronic illness in the family. Behavioral factors can include parental drug, alcohol and smoke use, parental abandonment, child abuse or neglect, social deprivation, and domestic violence. Educational can involve factors such as lack of preparation for the baby and parenthood, a delayed diagnosis, not receiving enough special education services and no family support. Biomedical factors are known to cause more severe cases of …show more content…
They tend to have trouble with their memory and take longer to recall information than peers. They tend to have a slower learning rate as well as troubles staying focused. Generalizing the information that was learned is an issue as well as their lack of motivation. As far as adaptive behaviors, children with intellectual disabilities find it challenging to make and keep friendships due to their poor communication skills, inappropriate behaviors, and troubles to understand emotional states. Intellectual disabled children are more likely to have behavioral problems such as aggression and self injury, difficulties accepting criticism, and having less self control than others (Heward,