According to Up-for reading, "Children with Down syndrome learn to read in the same way as typically developing children. They build on their good visual memory skills but find it more difficult to use phonics. In other words, they benefit from learning to read through a 'whole-word' learning strategy to start with, bringing in phonics knowledge at a later date."
I knew about how beneficial is to teach a child with Trisomy 21 to read at a very young age. So, I started to teach my son sight reading since he was about 18 months. I did my best, but after a while I got too many things to handle at work, therapies, house and family that I slowly left sight reading on the side. But I did because our new Speech Therapist is using an amazing program that is helping my son to talk and it is based on sight reading. But I still felt the guilt that I wasn't helping my son enough.Teaching sight reading to my son is hard because I am doing it on my own. I was thinking today to completely quit sight reading. But this evening, I found the sight word cards I made a while ago and I showed to Tommy. Guess What? He read his first sight word in Spanish this evening. After this, I was checking my mail and I got a letter from our local Down Syndrome Association inviting me to a reading program for toddler with Trisomy 21. Causality or destiny, it is very clear to me; I should continue because it is the best for my son. Things happens for a reason! It may be God telling me: "I am here to help you and here it is the help you need."
Enjoy the video of Tommy reading
his first word in Spanish
2 comments:
Rosa Maria, using sight word cards with Tommy will highly benefit him. Don't stop. We did this with Gabriel and he can read very well. In fact, Gabriel was one of two children in his Junior Kindergarten class that could read!
Life long literacy starts with small steps. You're onto the right thing. I don't think it was chance about trying the sight cards and the email from your local DSA -- I do think it is the call to keep trying.
I wanted to mention, too, that it is common for any parent who has a child with Ds to feel overwhelmed by "Am I doing enough?". I don't know if that feeling ever goes away? I still feel it strongly from time to time -- especially when new situations arise for us.
Good for Tommy and his new journey for life long literacy!!!♥
Hi Rosa Maria,
As fate would have it, shortly after reading your blog, Gabriel was using the set of printed sight word cards I made for him long ago. He often plays with this set, and he loves reading them. Anyway, I captured him on video and I wrote a post about it on my blog. I thought you might be interested in seeing it: http://mylifewithgabriel.blogspot.com/2010/07/gabriel-his-big-big-words.html
:)
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