Abstract:
This article focuses on parents' educational needs concerning their physically disabled pre-school child with the view to placement in an inclusive learning environment. Support services include, among other things, preparation of these children to enter an inclusive learning environment, and parent education to reach this goal. Therefore parent education with a view to promoting the suc cess of inclusion is of utmost importance, by focusing on those skills needed by physcially disabled children to perform sucessfully in the inclusive classroom
milieu. The goal of parent education is to mediate those skills necessary to become an integral part of regular classroom activities and be accepted within the inclusive learning environment; to facilitate a functional family life and educational atmosphere as basis for further
growth; to promote the least restrictive educational environment at home; to facilitate modeling of socially acceptable behaviour patterns; to promote a cognitively, emotionally, and socially stimulating learning environment at home; to provide interpersonal interaction with
nonhandicapped siblings and peers; and to remove stereotypes and stigmata attached to physically disabled children and to facilitate successful adjustment within the inclusive learning environment and the broader community during adulthood.
