A major problem faced by children who have hidden disabilities is that people and teachers don't see the disability and don't believe them.
Even when a diagnosis of disability is made, children are frequently told that they don't seem disabled. It's much easier to say duncey rather than disabled.
This in itself is a form of discrimination. Some would say the highest form. Hidden disabilities can also cause difficulties because of attitudes due to fear or ignorance. People fear what they do not know or understand or what they cannot see.
It may also come as a surprise to realise that people with visible disabilities may have a hidden disability. Why can't an obviously blind person not have epilepsy? Why can't a child with Down syndrome not have asthma? Asthma is another one of those visible/invisible illnesses that confuse people. When one says asthma, one thinks of a sweating person with air hunger with an oxygen mask receiving treatment in an emergency room.
That scenario is the tip of the iceberg. Most people with asthma have silent or hidden asthma. Often the only sign of asthma is coughing at night or coughing when playing or exercising. Such a child may appear perfectly well but because of tiredness from not sleeping well, be unable to concentrate fully in a busy classroom and gradually fall behind.
Perhaps the best example of a hidden disability is the child with epilepsy. Most people, when they think of epilepsy, think of the "beating up" type, ie the child or person who loses consciousness, falls to the ground and whose body begins to jerk uncontrollably for some minutes before subsiding. This is the so called "grand mal" or "major affliction" type of epilepsy and it's certainly visible so everyone knows something about it, usually the wrong thing like trying to stop the jerking or trying to put something in the child's mouth. Don't do that. Just turn the person over gently to lie face down and protect the face from harm. The epileptic attack will subside on its own.
The opposite of a grand mal epileptic attack is "petit mal" or "minor affliction" (quite inappropriately named by the French, who were the first to properly study the epilepsies, because its effects are not minor). The person or child having a petit mal or "absence" epileptic seizure loses contact with his surrounding for a couple of seconds.
They "absent" themselves from what they are doing for a moment. They do not fall down. They do not "beat up." They do not froth. They simply stop doing whatever they are doing, a hesitation in their conversation or a pause in play, stare off into space as if daydreaming and then return to reality and continue whatever they are doing.
Beware the child who "daydreams." It may not be daydreaming. The child may be having an epileptic attack. It's difficult to notice. The child may appear to snap back into classroom life at the teacher's shout, not because of the shout but because it was going to happen. Most children with epilepsy do not react to intervention whether it is a cry or a slap.
If these episodes happen frequently, the child begins to lose the thread of what is being taught and begins to fall behind in class with the usual increase in scolding, resentment and bad behaviour. All for want of knowledge, observation, suspicion and acceptance of epilepsy by the teacher and parent.
There are other types of epilepsy which are just as common but usually not noticed or understood. Epilepsy is essentially an abnormal electrical discharge from a group of brain cells. Since the brain has many types of brain cells which control all aspects of human activity and behaviour, control muscles, emotions, sensations, vision, hearing, taste etc, there are as many types of epilepsy as there are types of brain cells.
So you can have visual epilepsy where you see things that are not there, hearing epilepsy, where you hear abnormal sounds or tunes, taste and olfactory epilepsies, (tastes and smells that are not actually present), speech epilepsy (unusual speech or ravings), motor epilepsies like grand mal, sensation epilepsies (things moving on your body), emotional epilepsies (fear attacks, anger attacks), automatic movements of the extremities and other unusual behaviours and movements.
Unusual or unexpected behaviour in the classroom may not be due to "hardenness" or "aggression" but to epilepsy and before the child is unfairly targeted, he or she should be given the opportunity of a proper evaluation by someone with experience dealing with childhood epilepsies.
These then are the major hidden illnesses that may affect children in the classroom. There are other, less common but just as serious in their ability to confuse parents, teachers and doctors. The anaemias are one group, sickle cell in children of African descent and thalassaemias in children of East Indian parents and all the happy mix-ups in between which are thankfully becoming more frequent for the future of our society but which does not make it easier for the medical practitioner.
So any child who is not doing well in school needs to be seen by an experienced practitioner and the necessary tests done, but please none of this lab-shop over the corner rum-shop business.
Two final points to think about: 1) do you think that the public knows about the problem of hidden disabilities? 2) Do you think that hidden disabilities are overlooked in the media?