Minor Issues: Good health as a goal for my child with special needs

Five years ago, when Kate was still in her special education school, her goals involved things like mathematics and telling the time.

Yes, Kate is “just” 20 now, but those two decades seem to have passed in the blink of eye and I know that in another blink, 20 more will pass and she will, suddenly, be 40 years old. And those are the standard predictions for the general population. My daughter is at least doubly disadvantaged.We know from our own experience that a lot of the treatment we receive depends on self-reporting. Most pamphlets and pieces of medical advice have a version of “Tell your doctor...”“Let them know if your heart ever feels like it skips a beat...

One published in medical journal The Lancet in 2023 stated that “conditions that autistic adults were at higher risk of than were non-autistic adults” included heart failure, glucose dysregulation, iron deficiency anaemia and self-harm. “These increased risks mainly persisted regardless of intellectual disability or sex.”

The more I read about these potential problems, the more sure I am that my daughter should be as physically healthy as she can be for the next 20 or 40 years.She should be of a healthy weight. As she is about 1.55m tall, her weight shouldn’t be more than 50kg. That gives her a BMI of under 21, which is in the healthy range of 18.5 to 22.9.

But she should be doing at least one more similar activity a week, as the recommendation for adults in Singapore is 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week.

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

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