Yes, it is possible for someone with Down Syndrome to drive a car or graduate from college.  He gave the example of Karen Gaffney who swam the English Channel, then swam Lake Tahoe, then swam around the main island in Hawaii.  What an accomplishment.

Think about boy scouts becoming Eagle Scouts.  Only 5% of all Boy Scouts become Eagle Scouts, yet people with Down Syndrome achieve that high level of accomplishment when given the encouragement and direction.

There are few limits to what someone with Down Syndrome can achieve when given the right direction and when provided the tools to achieve.  Let’s give them all a chance to achieve their wildest dreams – then who knows – they just might achieve them.

Here is a link to the whole article.

http://www.hannibal.net/health/x915102938/-Focus-on-abilities-not-disabilities

Another surprising thought of them using this child is that there is no self-congratulations.  Target doesn’t even mention that there is a child with DS in their ad.  There is no mention of any special needs products or offerings or anything.  It is pure acceptance of our special children into the mainstream advertising media.

I have to say I was quite thrilled with this.  I applaud Target for taking this approach and I look forward to seeing more special children in future ads.

Child with Down Syndrome on left side

Hapkido is a Korean martial art that focuses on defensive moves and using leverage to protect yourself.  She really loves this activity.  She attends class 2 days every week for just over 1 hour each class.  At first I didn’t know how she would take to it but since her sister does it I thought we would try it.  I was surprised at how much she pays attention.  Not only is she doing the movements, she is growing in strength and coordination.   She looks forward to going each time class is held.  She is advancing as well.  She has risen to the level of yellow belt with 2 blue tips.  She is working on achieving her blue belt next.  She even gets to break boards.

The impact on her self confidence is amazing.  She is learning more about her body and her capabilities and she is interacting with many people from different age groups.  This is a typical martial arts class – not a special needs program.  They have made modifications on some of her skills to accommodate her low muscle tone, but mostly they have allowed her to let them know when she is at her limit.  And she rarely reaches her limit.

So, if you are looking for an activity for your child with DS, check into a martial art or similar activity.  Something where they can move around a lot and not get overly stressed.  You will be amazed at how much they may love it.

Leah in Hapkido

Leah Cheerleading with 5 Star in October

My daughter Leah loves cheerleading.  She has been a part of different special needs cheerleading groups for a couple of years now.  Our biggest challenge is every time we sign her up, get to know the staff, and she begins to really love it; the cheerleading team relocates further north.

This has actually happened twice now.  It is a function of the economy and many cheer teams and gymnastics teams have smaller groups and therefore reduced income so they relocate to cheaper facilites.  However, from our standpoint, it is quite frustrating as we are only willing to go so far to keep her in cheerleading.

Well, we thought we would give the local park district cheer team a try.  It isn’t a special needs program and it has quite a few girls who have been cheering with the same group for quite some time so there are a lot of solid relationships built.  I wasn’t sure how well Leah would be accepted in this group.  I was actually quite nervous about it until my wife returned from Leah’s first session with them.

Man was she impressed.  They welcomed Leah into their group and began teaching her immediately.  They saw how passionate she was about cheering and they ran with it.  Some of the other kids are reserved about her and others are very open and welcoming.  That is about par for the course for any kids and I love it.

So Leah has her first cheerleading event coming up.  The team will be cheering for one of the local middle school basketball games.  We are very excited to see her in action in front of an audience and to see how it all goes.

I can’t wait to report on it and let you all know as well.  I truly hope this works out because of her passion for it and because it is local and likely to remain local.  It is our own park district after all.

While it may seem far fetched to be able to improve cognitive abilities and memory skills, there is some solid research behind this group in being able to achieve their goal to improve the IQ score of a person with Down Syndrome by 15 points.  Maybe it doesn’t sound like much to you, but I can assure you, it might mean the difference between being a greeter at Walmart and having a better paying position where they have a chance to contribute even more to our society.

For more information on this research and how you can get updated on the progress, check out their website at:  https://www.dsrtf.org/plus15

Without question, my daughters love listening to music by Big Time Rush, Selena Gomez, Hannah Montana and the rest of the tween & teen music put out by Nickelodeon and Disney Channel.  However, one of their favorite songs is “Cherry Pie” by Warrant.  This carryover from the 80′s is a rockin’ tune, but when you really listen to the words, it isn’t an appropriate topic for kids.  My kids think it really is a song about Cherry Pie.  Yummm!

I’m totally glad they think it is about a fruit filled pastry.  It makes me cringe to think that someday they will know the true meaning of that song or others like it.  I wonder if my parents felt the same way when I was listening to “Knockin At Your Back Door” by Deep Purple.

Anyhow, I am glad that their music choices are still quite innocent and I can relax knowing I don’t have to cross that bridge for a while.  When the teen years come, I am sure I will be doing a lot of explaining about music meaning and some of the music choices I made.  I just hope they come to me and not decide to learn about these things from their friends.

Yikes.

Just a few days ago, Leah was talking to me about school.  Her speech is rather difficult to hear sometimes and I must pay attention when she is speaking to me.  This time my thoughts were elsewhere and I wasn’t listening.  She was talking away about something and I agreed to something and she got really excited.  About what, I don’t know.  When she got excited, I woke up from my fog and realized she was asking me something.  I didn’t want her to know I wasn’t listening, so I tried asking some questions that might elicit what I had agreed to.  It wasn’t working.  Finally, I had to just ask.  “Leah, what are you so excited about?”  It turns out I agreed to go to see the new “Alvin & The Chipmunks Squeekquel”. 

I really need to pay more attention.

Anyway, check out her blog, because she is a great storyteller and she is giving parenting tips from experience and from her position as parenting coach and facilitator of “Love and Logic”.  I have taken “Love and Logic” seminars twice and found them to be incredibly valuable in giving me the tools I needed to be more calm and in control of myself so that I can effectively work with and teach my kids without resorting to my old habit of yelling and getting angry. 

Check it out and enjoy.

Well, we first called her behavioral therapist who prescribed the meds as well as the school district nurse to discuss.  Fortunately, the nurse was the first to call back.  Once we got her input from observing Leah, we concluded that this might be a nervous tick not related to the drugs.  We got the return call from her behavioral therapist and discussed with her.  To make a long story short, we decided to take her off the drug while she was off for Christmas vacation. 

While we did this, I also started researching some other potential causes of ADHD behavior and found some interesting material on certain foods creating ADHD symptoms.  I decided to try to modify her diet a little at a time to see what would happen and to prevent her from being resistent to the change.  I decided to do this at the risk of modifying too many variables and not being able to really determine a source to the problem.  The result has been very positive.  She has greatly reduced her hair pulling and her ADHD symptoms have also been reduced while at home.  She has been back to school for a week now and her teacher has confirmed that her ADHD symptoms and impulsivity issues are reduced as well.  Her hair pulling at school has been reduced, though not eliminated.  I think this does show little correlation between the drugs and the hair pulling.  This also shows that she may be outgrowing the need for the meds or her dietary changes are having a positive impact on her behavior.  We have an appointment scheduled with her behavioral therapist next week and will be discussing these findings.  Until then, I plan on continuing the dietary plan we are on.

For a quick summary of the dietary changes I made, I greatly reduced the amount of bread she eats.  I also greatly reduced the amount of milk she drinks.  She is happy with the milk reduction as long as she can drink a very small amount of milk in the morning and still have her milk carton at lunch at school.  She is a big fan of bread, so to still give her some fiber and some of her bread, I switched her to Ezekiel bread which is made with non-gluten sources.  It is actually quite delicious and still has the look and consistency of her normal bread.  We also have increased her fruit and vegetable intake and she provided a lot less resistance to this change than I thought.  She is very willing to eat more fruit and vegetables as long as she has some input as to which fruits and vegetables she eats.  So we give her options that we are happy with and she gets to choose from those.   Another benefit of these dietary changes has been a very substantial reduction in her constipation.  She regularly has a BM every other day now, which is much more frequently than before the dietary changes.

I know we made several changes at once and invalidated any scientific controls to our theories, but we are getting a result that we are happy with and she is currently without any ADHD meds. 

I’ll keep you all posted on how this proceeds.

The research team is beginning working with the children at 2 years of age which is good, but we started working with our daughter from the day she was born by reading to her.  In fact, I remember quite well how I was catching up some casual reading and spent an afternoon reading a Stephen King book to her when she was less than a year old.

I truly believe reading to your children as babies has a great impact on their ability to read and communicate appropriately.  In Leah’s case, I believe she has strong reading and comprehensive skills because of how early we began reading to her.  She was able to experience how reading different types of stories had a different feel and a different style of communicating.  The tone I used when reading Stephen King to her was very different from when I read Dr. Seuss.  Reading from soothing books such as “Goodnight Moon” deliver a very distinct tone while reading from something more character driven such as “Where the Wild Things Are“. 

I think the most important thing is to really have fun with the reading.  Even though the kids are a little older now and can read their own books, we still use character voices and stomp around the room like a monster or make noises with our mouths along with whatever is going on in the story.  It doesn’t matter who is reading.  Both of our girls are good readers and it is such a pleasure to have them read to us – or us read to them.

We now have a “short-round” (baby) at home.  We had our third daughter in March which is why I don’t update my blog as much.  We didn’t start out reading as much with her due to the chaos of life, but we are making it a priority now.  It will be interesting to see if there is much of a differrence in her reading and communication development than the other girls since we got a later start with her.

Reading is so important to developing good and appropriate communication skills whether the child has Down Syndrome or is typically developing.  There are so many good stories for kids and so many fun ways of telling them.  To skip reading to your kids is skipping a really fun part of their development.

That’s my $1.98 worth.  Time for espresso…

In the same vein, Leah’s Pediatrician has designated herself as the single source for all of Leah’s medical information.  She has positioned herself to receive all reports and test results from each of her specialists so she knows what is going on and can better diagnose any problems with drug interactions, medical procedures, etc.  We are incredibly blessed to have her on our team.  I don’t know if it will help her business or not, but her name is Dr. Laura Buthod with Centegra in Crystal Lake.  If it doesn’t bost her business, at least send her some good thoughts.

On the support group front, our Down Syndrome support group is hosting Christie Clarke, founder of Out A Box Group to deliver a 6 week parenting seminar based on the principles of Love and Logic.  The seminar series begins Oct 1, 2009 and will be held in Crystal Lake, IL.  If you are interested in learning more, feel free to contact me at:  onepercent2@gmail.com

Have a great week.