Teacher helping mentally challenged children integrate

Center she founded in Northeast China assists autistic students via sensory training

A retired physics teacher is putting her scientific mind to work to help youngsters with a wide assortment of cognitive disabilities.

Over the past 18 years, more than 2,000 children have received systematic education at Wang Lijun's training center for emotionally and mentally challenged young people in Changchun, Jilin province.

Some of the children are autistic, while others have been diagnosed with conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and various levels of mental disability.

Wang, 68, set up the center in 2000 when few people were familiar with the word "autism".

"During my decades as a physics teacher, I also did lots of research into teenage behavioral science and mental health," she said. "I launched a psychological consulting service for students in 1995, which was widely accepted among students and their parents."

Even after retiring in 2000, she often received various inquiries about students' learning difficulties, Wang said. As a result, she decided to set up a training center to improve children's learning abilities through "sensory integration training".

Among the students at the center, several children were of particular interest to Wang when she first opened its doors.

"They showed no difference in appearance from others but their behavioral expressions were abnormal," Wang recalled. "They never looked each other in the eye and seldom responded to my instructions, and they were poor in sports and communicating with others."

After consulting copious volumes of reference materials, she came to understand that they were autistic - a developmental disorder of the brain that affects an individual's ability to communicate.

People with autism are known to struggle with social interaction and speech.