What Qualifies As a Disability in a Child?

Many forms of physical and/or mental impediments can qualify as a disability including over-arching conditions such as autism or cerebral palsy. According to the American Disability Act, a disabled person is defined "as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment. What qualifies as a disability in a child should be properly diagnosed through doctors and appropriate tests.

ADHD and ADD

• Attention Deficit Disorder is a psychosomatic condition while Attention Deficit Hypertension Disorder can be a developmental disability. It not only starts in childhood but can also follow people into adulthood. Children with ADD show symptoms such as inattentiveness while ADHD children find it impossible to focus on any tasks or even hold a conversation. If it is not treated in childhood, it could go on to adulthood despite being once believed that children could grow out of it.

Autism

• One of the most complex mental disabilities, it can last a lifetime and clinicians can recognize symptoms before a person turns three. Known as a developmental disability, it disrupts the person's communication, social interactions and every day routine. It affects every one differently too as doctors consider it a spectrum disorder from mild to extreme cases.

  Symptoms include: a child not responding to his or her own name, not explaining what he wants, delayed speech, not making eye contact, tuning people out and living in his own world, learning inability and odd movement patterns. An autistic child can have physical characteristics of an exaggerated childlike face with larger eyes and large forehead.

Cerebral Palsy

• Cerebral Palsy shows in several forms but it generally means a lack of brain control over the body's muscles. It could mean all brain cells or brain cells controlling muscles need repair. Ninety percent of people with this condition get it from a brain injury before labor begins. A person afflicted with the condition may go through therapy to help live with the condition depending on the severity but some people with it are restricted to a wheelchair.

Vision Impairment

• Blindness or visual impairment can occur at any time, either through an accident, as a result of another disability or inexplicably (such as a birth defect). Visual impairment may not mean complete blindness as there are different degrees of it where children can still see some shapes or light, but nothing further. Infants who are born prematurely run risk of being visually impaired some time in their life either severely or needing to wear prescription glasses. But, advances in science can minimize the risk of premature infants becoming blind.