Mental retardation strikes the parents much harder than it does the retarded child itself. Because of the personality difficulties and problems of adjustment of the retarded child, many parents consider their life to be miserable.
However, while some parents ignore the mentally retarded child, others go out of their way to help him to the extent of overprotecting him. This, on the contrary, makes one child completely unfit to learn or achieve anything.
For the purpose of special education, retarded people may be classified into two groups:
(1) The educable mentally retarded (EMR) and
(2) The trainable mentally retarded (TMR).