It’s never been easy to grow in a family with a mentally and physically challenged sibling. The attention and the financial resources of the family are always drawn to sustain the person in dire need. For the parents, it has been always a challenge to provide their children with equal attention, needless to say, with equal nurturance and utmost care for all of their children.
Usually, the children, at their early stage already knew that there is something which is distinct with their family. One example which I interviewed via Facebook is Dennis who is a second child to his elder sister who is a mentally challenged individual. At his early age, he already knew the situation. Her sister who is one and a half year older than him started walking when she’s already three years old, while him, Dennis, already started to learn how to run. His parents already told him to protect his sister. When they were in a school, her sister was usually retained to the first grade for his sister could not absorbed what her teachers were teaching her. While Dennis, advanced to the higher level.
Dennis was in grade three when their mother decided not to enroll his sister to school. It was a painful part to his sister for she really missed her classmates. Instead, their mother privately tutored his sister. It was already a success for his mother to teach his older sister to write her name and to do some house chores.
When his sister reached the age of 10, there her epilepsy occurred. Their dad was forced to leave the country to work abroad sustain her regular check-ups and medicines. The pain in the head of his sister was too severe that she ended into several hospitals. The augment the situation, his mother was even forced to employ herself as a laundry woman. During this time, Dennis, as a high school student cannot easily go to school for he needed to look after his sister.
After Dennis graduated his high school, the doctors informed their family that the brain of his sister was in need of constant draining of an amount of liquid which causes the terrible pain. They needed to implant a tube in her cranium. This needed a big amount of money and his college education was almost put into jeopardy. Instead, he enrolled himself into a state-college where he earned his BS-Education degree.
As Dennis looks back, he sees the situation as a grace from God. He admitted that he always wanted to have a normal family with healthy members who, like the other families, had a very normal life. The situation forced him to grow-up. He was endowed with so much responsibility as a child that he missed so much opportunity to play with his friends when he was young. But none-the-less, he learned at the very early stage of his life to sacrifice. He understood right away that his family was his first mission.
When he became a teacher, he became an advocate and promoter of the rights of special-children. He usually brings along with him his sister so that his class would know her. He even allowed some of his high school students to visit his sister at home where they usually do their reviews and research since Dennis collected huge amount of reference books and he had a connection of fast internet. When there’s an activity in school, like Scouting, he also let his sister to stay for an overnight to experience what normal teenagers would undergo. It was through this that Dennis applied this idea of welcoming mentally and physically challenged youth to enter Scouting. As a Scouter, Dennis has been so active to the Antipolo Municipal Council. Right now, after teaching for almost three years in a Montessori school and four years in a public school, he decided to enter the Seminary to continue the mission he has discovered in his own loving family.
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an interview to Den Mar by Artzie Villegas Perez
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