Yesterday Landon "borrowed" a pen from his Occupational Therapist and made a mark on his leg. When he discovered it last night he came over to me, signed Boo-Boo, and then pointed to his leg where the mark was. It made me laugh so hard. When Travis came home from work, Landon tried to show his Daddy but he pointed at the wrong knee.
He has become so good at using his signs to communicate with us. It is amazing to watch him learn. He is now up to 49 signed words. After doing a little research we feel it's time to start exposing Landon to "reading". There has been reliable research done that shows many children with Down syndrome show the ability to learn to read at an unusually early age. The majority of children in the studies learned to read single words by three to four years of age and some even earlier. One of the other factors in knowing when to start teaching reading is when they know 50 words. After reading the article by Sue Buckley: Teaching children with Down's syndrome to read, http://www.down-syndrome.org/perspectives/9/ , I purchased a few of the books cited to learn a little bit more. I was amazed at what all the children learned. I know that Landon may not read this early but we won't know unless we give him the opportunity.
Opportunity. That's one of the things I have learned with Landon. We don't know what he can or will do unless we give him the opportunities to try. And just because he tries to do something now and doesn't succeed doesn't mean he can't do it, it just means that he is not ready to do it now.
1 comment:
I'm so amazed to hear about all the words he can sign! Good for you for taking the time to learn it with him! Not that you wouldn't, but I know that it's not easy to learn all of those words - we know less than 5 or so! Love, Jluie
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