A common "issue" with kids with Down Syndrome is stubbornness. Yes, I know, all of you parents out there who have little ones are saying," all kids are stubborn" and that may be true but kids with DS tend to have a little extra punch. This is not true for all kiddos but a lot. Also, this stubbornness is not always a bad thing but can be a bit frustrating. Here lately we have been dealing with a little of the battle of the wills at our house. Landon is really testing his boundaries and this is a lot easier to deal with at home compared to dealing with it while we are out or at therapy.
The two areas that have been VERY difficult have been during speech therapy and swim lessons. After a little research I decided to try the idea of creating a social story. Social stories were originally thought of for kids with autism but really work for any child who would benefit from expectations written out and read over in book form. I thought I would make a social story for speech first to see how it worked. I took the camera to speech and took pictures of EVERYTHING. Starting with what he does while I sign him in to what he does when we are done with speech. IT WORKED!!! I didn't really have high expectations but just thought it was worth a try, and like everything else we do with Landon, he proved me wrong. Before I did the social story, when I told him we were going to speech he would say, "no, no, no" and during speech he wouldn't follow the schdule, wouldn't cooperate or do what was asked of him. Since writing the book and reading it with him at least one day before and the day of speech, none of those things are true. He has been obeying Ms. Lori and acting like he had been a few months ago.
Because the social story seemed to be working with speech I decided to try to make one for his swim lessons. His teachers are college students and they were not very firm with him. He was getting out of the pool several times and ignoring them when they would ask him to get back in. He would say, "all done, all done" after not even really trying to do what they asked. so....I took the camera to swim lessons and took lots of pictures. Then the social story was created. We read the story several times before swim lessons and guess what....the best behavior he has had since he started. :)
Quincadence or not... I don't know but i really think they work. I look forward to going to speech again and am thankful that he is finally showing his swim teachers what a good little boy he is. It's amazing that something as simple as a story can change a situation. I am very thankful.
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My precious little guy
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2 comments:
That sounds like such a good idea! We were having issues with Lilly not wanting to do certain things (like transitioning things - going to speech, coming out of speech, etc) and we've started counting on our fingers what we're doing. We go through it a few times: "first potty, then stroller, then speech, then home, then daddy!" Each "thing" is a finger and it helps her to look past the one or two things she's resistent on because she can anticipate exactly what's coming next in her routine. She loves it - after she knows the order of events, she runs to the potty (or whatever the first thing is) to get started, and as we check each thing off our list, she knows what's coming next. Such better behavior! But that being said, I might do a social story as well and see how it works for her.
Great idea! We'll have to work on ours.
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