Tommy is enrolled in Parents as Teachers

As any other parents, we want the best for our child; therefore, we are providing to our son with all the tools he needs to reach his full potential and we have great people who are guiding us to nurture our son's brain.

Tommy is currently enrolled in the Parents as Teacher program, which provides parents with child development knowledge and parenting support. The program's goals are:

• Increase parent knowledge of early childhood development and improve parenting practices
• Provide early detection of developmental delays and health issues
• Prevent child abuse and neglect
• Increase children's school readiness and school success

This is a very neat program because it is FREE. We have once a month home visit by a teacher. She gives us hand-outs about child development and positive parent-child relationships, which have became very helpful for me. Our teacher uses the same materials and activities she currently uses with other kids of Tommy's age. She hasn't modified the program because he is responding to the games and activities according to his age. She said Tommy has good attention span (it is not the first time we heard it), which is very important to learn in the school years. The activity of our last visit was about Music and Tommy was shaking his head according to the rhythm and incorporating his hands as part of his dance, he finds the way to shake is booty; even although, he is not walking yet. He is a funny guy!

I think the key of success, for kids with or without the syndrome, is STIMULATION. It seems, there are more and more kids with T21 who are doing many things according to their ages. The blog "My life with Gabriel" is a true examples of what stimulation can do. Gabriel is doing great regardless the syndrome. Read what his mom says about their Parent-Teacher interview:

T and I had our parent-teacher interview this morning before school started. We brought along the kids who played while Gabe's teacher caught us up to speed. I guess I expected more -- maybe more negative? -- I don't know -- but I came away from the meeting realizing that Gabe is doing great. In fact, he's right in line with his little peers right now. Other than needing more help in the French department, he seems to be participating in every other aspect, and his "scores" in certain areas (counting to 39, shape sorting, word recognition, patterning, etc.) are above or the same as his classmates...click here for the full story

I think we cannot know the future, but we can build a better future in the present. How we stimulate our son today will help him tomorrow.