Mother Blames Medicine for Son's Special Needs in Russia
The topic of disability in modern society has only recently ceased to be taboo. Every year, more inclusive conditions are created worldwide, allowing people with special needs to integrate smoothly into society. However, many do not consider how such people fare in Russia, what they are interested in, and the journey they and their parents have undertaken.
Correspondents Anna Ivanina and Evgeny Sofiychuk from NGS55.RU met with a woman raising a special needs child. We learned about the difficulties she faced, how she realized her child was ill, and how comfortable they are living within the existing system. Details are in the article.
Life Path of a Special Needs Child«s Mother
Our heroine is Marina Kovalenko. She is now 49 years old and raises her son alone. She was born in Omsk. Her childhood was like everyone else«s: she attended kindergarten and school. She was a teenager in the nineties and, as she admits, lived in not the most prosperous conditions.
Her mother and father divorced when she was only 10 years old due to difficult personalities and different temperaments. Marina and her older brother Sasha lived with a stepfather who loved children very much and denied them nothing.
During her studies, at age 16, she met her future husband Slava. They lived in the same district and first met at a friend«s birthday party. Describing their relationship, it can be said that they were complicated: they often broke up and got back together.
«We were friends, then we weren»t. I was studying in college, he was working. And I continued my education and later enrolled in a finance university.«
They married five years later, after learning that Marina was pregnant with their first child, a daughter named Kristina. The girl was completely healthy and behaved like all children. She is now 27 years old, works in medicine, but no longer communicates with her mother.
«Slava really wanted a second child, and specifically a son. But I, of course, couldn»t decide on another one because I had a cesarean section the first time. The operation was difficult for me, the scar took a long time to heal.«
After 10 years, she finally decided to have a second baby, and Dima was born.
«I was fully prepared for childbirth and passed all the tests. Everything was in order and pointed to me having a normal, healthy child.»
How Was the Disease Detected?
Dima was born healthy and grew up without serious illnesses. As his mother recalled, the child sometimes caught colds, but everything passed quickly. There was even a case where after a vaccination, the baby«s legs were temporarily paralyzed, but he recovered quickly.
At six months, when Marina took the child to a treatment room, she first realized that something was wrong with the child.
«He had a cold, and I took him to the hospital. When we entered with other mothers, the other children reacted to the injections, but my Dima was silent. I thought: how come, everyone is crying but mine isn»t. I noticed he had dulled pain sensitivity. That was the first warning sign.«
The situation worried the mother. After some time, she took the child to a neurologist. After telling the whole story, she only received a smirk from the doctor.
«I complained about the situation, and the doctor just laughed at me. She told me not to talk nonsense and that my child was healthy. He was very small then, and I calmed down.»
Dima was one and a half years old. The family decided to start a furniture business. Someone needed to look after the son, so they decided to entrust him to a qualified pediatric nurse. The medical worker analyzed his behavior and said that the boy often withdraws into himself and doesn«t talk. This became the second warning sign.
«Closer to three years old, I was already taking him to specialists, they told us, »Wait, the child will start talking. Boys are like that, they develop slower.« They were essentially just reassuring us. But then we realized that not everything was normal. Here, the situation was more serious. We spent a month in the hospital on the Left Bank, and there they diagnosed him with speech and intellectual impairment, simply put—dementia.»
When Marina learned the doctors« conclusion, she ended up in the neurosis department: first her mother died from cancer, and then her son»s diagnosis was revealed. Her stepfather also died—he committed suicide, unable to bear the loss of his beloved wife. For four years, Marina worked with psychotherapists and took strong medications.
«For four years, I learned to accept the situation and it took me a long time to come to terms with it. At the same time, I had to work. We needed to live somehow. Slava and I traded furniture. We had our own workshop and production.»
The father of the special needs child reacted to the diagnosis more calmly than the mother, but internally did not understand how this could happen to them.
«I Could Only Love This Child»
Raising a special needs child was difficult. She didn«t know how to approach him, and at times it was unbearably hard.
«The child changes: from a little person he becomes a teenager. You have to reveal the world to him yourself, and each time you adapt yourself. There are people who are gifted at communicating with special needs children: they have patience and know how to contact them. But for me, it wasn»t like that: I didn«t know how to approach him. I could only love this child.»
It was hard to simply accept that your child doesn«t understand information immediately and you need to teach him to think and act correctly. When she was raising her daughter, she grasped everything on the fly and learned quickly. With her son, everything was different. Over time, the businesswoman realized that if she took what happened too seriously, she simply wouldn»t withstand it psychologically.
If the doctors hadn«t reassured their family and had made the correct diagnosis right away, Dima could have learned to speak fully.
Only at seven years old did Dima start pronouncing words a little.
Education for the Special Needs Boy
In 2015, when the special needs child entered first grade at the sixth adaptive school, the state paid them 15,000 rubles (approximately $150 at current rates), which the family spent on tuition fees. The rest of the funds came from the business. But the money wasn«t enough for four people.
«I believe the state needs to approach this problem more seriously. If certain moments hadn»t been missed, if I could have stayed at home—but I wasn«t allowed to—I would have fully engaged with the child. We lacked my husband»s one salary. In our country, raising a special needs child is a huge labor.«
From the sixth adaptive school, Dima transferred to the Kirill and Mefodiy school because his intellect was more developed than other children«s. The new institution promised an individual approach and enhanced education, but the family never saw the result. He studied there for three years.
«Initially, we were supposed to enter speech school No. 19, but due to corruption, they didn»t let us in. There, they accepted for money those who didn«t fit, because the institution itself was considered very good.»
The most painful thing was realizing that at the school, someone «took Dima»s place,« her son lost the chance to study alongside ordinary, healthy children.
«When we managed to get into the school, the homeroom teacher analyzed him. She observed him for two weeks and delivered the verdict: »If you had come to us in first grade, then in fourth grade I would have transferred him to a general education school.« This is the most painful—to hear that everything before was wrong. Medicine—it does all this wrong.»
«He Found Himself a Young Woman»
The father left the family when Dima was 10 years old. They separated after 21 years of marriage.
«He found himself a young woman and left. I experienced it very hard. Of course, at first I cried a lot. Then I calmed down and didn»t try to find out anything. I«m a proud girl. I filed for divorce, we were divorced, and we divided the property.»
The main stress turned out to be the loans that the special needs child«s mother took out for their joint business—totaling one million rubles (around $10,000). All obligations were placed on her.
«They refused to divide the loans in the appellate court. The judges didn»t consider that I have a child—a second-degree disabled person. For seven years, I paid off the loans. The last payment was in December 2025.«
No one knows what is happening with the father now. He even stopped communicating with his son, though they were once inseparable. He doesn«t congratulate the child on holidays, doesn»t communicate, and doesn«t help his previously beloved and long-awaited son in any way.
«Dima was very sad when his dad stopped communicating with him, he missed his father. He still misses him. We try to take it calmly. We are a family—mom and son.»
«Russia Is Not Adapted to Special Needs People»
The state pays a social pension of 24,000 rubles (about $240). She has to work part-time as a courier for dental clinics. In the spring, Marina plans to go on a caregiving pension, which will be about 15,000 rubles (approximately $150). In her free time, she likes to create candles and sew cosmetic bags, which she then sells on marketplaces.
She doesn«t plan to quit her side jobs because state money isn»t enough for the family, and she can«t work full-time: she must always be available in case something happens to Dima. The only way to deal with the difficult financial situation is to maintain a frugal budget. She admits that there are debts for utility payments and they live in constant arrears.
With sadness in her eyes, she says that Russia is not adapted to special needs people, especially those with more complex diagnoses.
«Our country is not adapted to such people. I believe that in every city there should be special boarding houses where they could develop socially, work on themselves, learn something, and live like everyone else.»
«Everything in the System Needs to Change»
«Everything in the system needs to change, honestly. We should move correctly in the field of disability, but it»s only defined by doctors. They told us: «Wait, wait, he»ll start talking, he«ll start talking.» That«s how we waited. Corruption here is terrible.»
It«s unlikely that Dima»s speech will be restored, but there is hope that by age 30, his development will level out a bit. Now he tries to speak, but internal barriers prevent words from sounding clearly—thoughts break off, phrases come out incomplete. Empty promises and reassuring words from doctors turned into a bitter loss for him: the young man remains a second-group disabled person and doesn«t know how to clearly express what he feels and thinks.
In a year and a half, the guy will finish school, then he will be 20 years old. He likes the subjects «computer science» and «English» the most, and he spends his free time on computer games.
«Oh, I really dream that he can go to college and study to be a programmer. Maybe in this profession, he can become the first.»
