Eating

this is just sad. to be unable to even feed yourself. i feel bad for complaining about how things went wrong today.

You are right, Glenn. I'm not having the best day today but I must say, I did just stop and think. Things could be worse.

After reading some of the history of the place, I wonder if the staff there actually sat down and helped the people learn how to eat, in a patient manner anyway.

I like "the student WILL ...". :D

And is it the spoon or the student being held by another person? If it's the student, that makes the 'will' more certain. :D

Pretty sad state of affairs. I think everyone is right,my day just got better

thirt soup? It is sad...we take for granted our kids feeding themselves without doing all this. You need mega patience to work with kids who need this much help to survive.

This must of sucked, and eating raisins with a spoon. "thin" soup of course, raisins no.

I feel so bad that kids have to live like this with no chance of joy to live like children. I also can;t imagine how had it must be for the people who worked at this facility and others like this one. To have the patents and then to have to go home to their own families at the end of the day.

To me the most difficult and stressful job on earth has to be a doctor that works in palliative care unit in a children's hospital. My mom used to visit one with our little dog. She said it was extremely hard at times.

I can't imagine the horror of such an existence.

You know what this brings to mind?

I don't know why but I am thinking about "The Miracle Worker" about Helen Keller when the teacher was trying to teach her how to eat properly...and got spoons thrown at her at first.

I can't imagine not being able to perform such a basic task...but I know there is a school near me that houses profoundly mentally disabled children, and I suppose they need help eating. :( Makes me sad.

Seriously sobering! We should give thought to what it would be like to have a child that needs this kind of attention.

Wow....I have no comment.....just....wow

Mikey - thanks! How did I see thirt? LOL. Thin - of course! Forget the spoon - use a straw.

Very disturbing to think kids had to live like this, not even being able to eat without help, and also must have been hard for the staff

Toot; Don't worry I was trying to work out what 'thirt' meant as well at first .

I have to admit, when you first look at it, it DOES look like "THIRT", but then if you look again really close, you can see that the "T" part is just a smudge and that letter is an "N" LOL...

How neat...it is almost like a puzzle!

I am a lurker, on this site, so you guys don't see much of me, but this is very disturbing. I feel sad for students like that. Just think that they have to live like that. Its soooo sad. :-(

i wanna know whats in the thick soup and the thin soup ... yuckkkk

This may have been in the early stages of realization that some developmentally disabled people were actually "trainable". My cousin had brain damage from a high fever and the doctor told my Aunt that she could just go home and leave her son there and the doctor would put him away for her...she didn't need to worry herself over him. She did take him home and later in life after my aunt died, he was capable of living in a group home because she chose to keep him home and teach him whatever he could learn.

Kudos to your aunt and everyone like her, Pegasus.

Wow, that's just sad.

I used to work with autistic children and we uses Applied Behavioral Analysis to teach them, and we used task analysis to teach these self help skills. Kind of a rustic form of the ABA used today but at least someone was actually teaching!!!!!

All in all it's just another brick in the wall.All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

Haha.. jello at the menu.. like ever !

Laws and acceptance of people is so different today than it was in the past. I worked at a State School/Developmental Center in the 1970s. This would have been a standarized goal plan to get someone to eat.

In the past anyone developmental disability was not accepted in society so often people took their children to these centers because they were forced to lest it hurt the rest of the family in moving forward. Societies views of people, and the people that bore them was horrendous.

There are even cases of children being left at these centers when money was short in families and then the State not giving them back when the family was back on level footing.

Wives were also often taken to these centers when a man wanted to move on to a new woman but didn't want to deal with a divorce. Until the late 1970s, a woman was still basically the property of her husband in many ways. He could have her confined on the word of one physician buddy.

There were horrible times in the past, and wokring at one of these institutions was a very depressing and demanding time. You felt bad, but could only do so much. Reagan cut funding in the 1980s which caused many of them to close. Unfortunately, it also left many with no where to go, hence the number of homeless we now have on our streets.