Contribution of Grandparents in Meeting Educational Challenges of Exceptional Child-Highlighting Ordeals and Confrontations in Local Context to Understanding Global Circumstances

Abstract

The present study evaluates the social, moral, emotional and economic contributions of grandparents towards the educational achievement of their grand children with exceptional needs. The study adopts mix research method, where survey method and qualitative method is used to collect data. 250 grandparents are selected through multi-purpose sampling, where purposive sampling is used to identify family with exceptional child/children with the support of Parents Teacher Association (PTA) of different schools, located within the city, while snowball sampling is used to select the respondents from Karachi, Pakistan. Questionnaire was designed with five main areas of disabilities, which was checked for internal reliability. The result reveals that grandparents are highly involved in supporting the education of special need children, particularly they are supportive in the area of homework, preparation of educational material, learning innovative things, self- help skills, support in implementing individualize education plan and in meeting educational expenses. Most of the economic and social needs are fulfilled by grandparents, particularly paternal grandparents, with additionally contribute in the education attainment of exceptional children. They morally support their own children to fill the gaps of detachment. However, they are emotionally under high pressure and go towards extreme acts to release their own children from their miseries.