Why early intervention? As in so many other things in life, the sooner you start, the easier it is. Studies have shown that the earlier a child with disabilities gets started on therapy or education, the better that child will do.

It makes sense. The brain is growing rapidly during the early years of a person’s life and it is able to adapt and acquire new skills at a rate it will never achieve in later years. Think how easily a child can learn a new language as compared to an adult. Babies and young children are like sponges, absorbing every new thing we offer them because that is the nature of growth.

When we opened Karuna Vihar school, we soon discovered that the younger a child was when she was admitted, the faster her progress. Those kids who came to us after seven or eight had a harder time and learned more slowly. And so we established the Early Intervention Centre. The youngest child we’ve had so far was just ten days old.

We have seen remarkable things happen – and because it is a family-based program, the results are not just with the kids. Mothers, fathers and grandparents have also had their lives transformed. Because early intervention is actually the wrong term. It’s really early enrichment, early appreciation, early discovery of the miracles waiting for us when we learn to accept people as they are.