[LesLattis]

> But it must be admitted that Thais are not yet familiar with the idea of seeking counselling, which is a routine practice for people in any modern society, particularly in the West.
This is probably because there is a long-standing stigma among the Thai people which labels all people seeking counselling as "psycho", which certainly is not always the case.


yes. and that's how we have children with severe learning problems, dyslexia, autism, etc. in a bilingual school. so far we have seen only one family who was willing to face the truth and pull out their child and send him to a Thai-only school - after two years. another family was convinced to seek the help of a psychologist and get the child assessed - after the teachers got forms to fill in about the child's behaviour and progress, the parents were seen CHANGING the teachers' replies on one of the forms (checking boxes). and of course there are no special schools, classes or teaching assistants/helpers either for the mentally retarded, slow, special needs children or for the outstanding, extremely talented students. a colleague whose 3-year-old son was severely autistic had to move to Bangkok to be able to send the child to a school for children with special needs. Thai teachers don't seem to get any training on helping children with different /special needs. this whole situation is just not acceptable if Thailand wants to get anywhere.