ECDV110 Child Development I

How video games benefits children with special needs in Canada?

Introduction

Children with disabilities refers to the group of young ones who are disabled in one way or in a combination of various ways. The disabilities that these children have makes their engagement in various activities to be difficult. For example, those children that have mental challenges makes them to develop in a slower manner than the normal children. Those that have language and speech impairments encounter the challenge of expressing themselves to other people according to Barajas, Al Osman & Shirmohammadi, (2017). Regardless of the type of disability a child have, it influences how he or she interacts with other children and the process of learning. Consequently, having a disability does mean that the children have no space in the universe. There exist several ways of improving health, development and well-being of these children. The goal of this assignment is to elaborate how video games assist the children with special needs based on Canadian context.

According to Baranowski et al (2016), the first benefit that children with special needs in Canada can get from video games is the social skills. Technology have advanced in the field of video games. Currently, the technology is capable of connecting one person to another regardless of the location. An example of this game is the world of Warcraft. The game can allow the children to learn social skills by doing away with the need of intimidating face to face interaction. The children can interact in a more friendly way without threatening each other. Significantly, the video game understands that the special needs children have common interest and therefore they will not take time to think of what to talk about during interaction.

Secondly, children with autism spectrum mainly experience extreme kind of stress when they make mistakes in their lives. However, it is not the best version of life to live in because everybody makes mistake. When children with special needs in Canada play video games, it gives them room to make mistakes. From there, the children suffering from autism spectrum will understand the benefits of making mistake in life. When they join the real world, Sousa, (2016) stated that they become comfortable with mistakes and see them as normal. They get the opportunity to correct themselves instead of developing stress. Another significance of video games to children with special needs in Canada is flexibility according to Buzzi, Buzzi, Perrone, Rapisarda & Senette, (2016). The group of the disable that always have issues with flexibility is the children suffering from autism. Video games teaches these children various alternative ways of approaching challenges. For example, teachers dealing with children having autism spend a lot of time teaching these children to embrace the challenge they have in themselves and also in their surroundings. However, when these children play video games, they will learn to adapt automatically. For instance, in a video game there are different levels in the game and every level on method. If one cannot learn the new strategies then he or she cannot pass that single level of the game. Each level have unique challenges and the gamer must think of new strategies to counter the challenges.

Apart from the above benefits, there is also the issue of developing motor skills among the children with special needs in Canada. A good number of children having spectrum lacks the motor skills. The skill they can only develop through playing the video games. The video games offer the physical environment that the child can easily train. For instance the video game called the Nintendo Wii requires the children to act the actions they need their virtual character should make in the process. In such a case the child will have to develop skills of body control.

Many children with special needs in Canada have challenges in reading and writing. However, playing video games can assist in solving such challenge. The benefit of playing video games to these children is that the games provide both written and verbal instructions. It then breaks down the instruction into various small steps. After the game have given the player instruction, it will now emphasize on the child’s strengths and weaknesses to assist in improving the writing and reading skills of the child. There are also supported chatting during the game. The video games are able to detect the facial expression and give time for the user to respond in a safely manner.

Conclusion

Many things have been said concerning video games in Canada. Some people have painted bad image about video games. For instance, some have said that the games are harmful and addictive to the children. However, with the improvement in technology video games have been one of the ways of improving lives of children with disability especially in Canada.

References

Barajas, A. O., Al Osman, H., & Shirmohammadi, S. (2017, April). A Serious Game for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder as a tool for play therapy. In 2017 IEEE 5th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH) (pp. 1-7). IEEE.

Buzzi, M. C., Buzzi, M., Perrone, E., Rapisarda, B., & Senette, C. (2016, April). Learning games for the cognitively impaired people. In Proceedings of the 13th Web for All Conference (p. 30). ACM.

 Baranowski, T., Blumberg, F., Buday, R., DeSmet, A., Fiellin, L. E., … & Mellecker, R. (2016). Games for health for children—Current status and needed research. Games for health journal, 5(1), 1-12.

Sousa, D. A. (2016). How the special needs brain learns. Corwin Press.