Subj : New to the echo...  1B.
To   : Mark Hofmann
From : Ardith Hinton
Date : Fri Mar 02 2018 02:36:56

Hi, Mark!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

MH>  Actually, he would use sit in an open indian style and
MH>  use his legs to skoot. It was a combination of a hop and
MH>  skoot using legs (sideways on the ground) and hopping on
MH>  his butt.


           Nora still enjoys sitting cross-legged... in her own inimitable way, 
of course!  Years ago it drove her physios crazy because they were afraid she'd 
dislocate her hip.  She hasn't yet.  I'm also told it is a very stable position 
which helps enable kids to avoid toppling over & maintain good posture....  :-)



MH>  I had read that the crease tends to be a straight line on
MH>  kids with DS, but that isn't always the case.  There are
MH>  cases of people without DS that have the same straight line
MH>  crease, but they are rare.


           Yes, there's an example of a characteristic associated with DS which 
also occurs... perhaps less often... among the general population.  Another has 
to do with the "epicanthic fold" at the corner of the eye adjacent to the nose. 
For Orientals this is normal... for Caucasians it's normal in babies & in about 
10% of other folks who do not have DS.  Before chromosome tests were available, 
Dr. Langdon Down identified numerous characteristics which are still used today 
in making a tentative diagnosis.  I've seen enough real-life examples to hazard 
a guess in many cases.  It's important to realize, however, that what's unusual 
is a collection of features which might otherwise be relatively rare & that not 
everybody with DS has exactly the same features.  The dummified explanations of 
DS don't acknowledge that there's more than one variety either.  By comparison, 
if I see an article about leukemia in which the author says there are two kinds 
I may not learn much from him or her because I can think of five at least.  ;-)



MH>  Getting the proper movement in the tounge seems to be the
MH>  trick with our son. When I work on words with him, I say
MH>  them slow and in sections.  Making a sound and then turning
MH>  it into a word.  Like "TTTTTTTTTTTTTRRRRRRRRR  uck".


           As a former Learning Assistance teacher, I approve!  Exaggeration is 
a great teaching tool, IMHO, along with doing these things in slow motion.  :-)



MH>  Once he masters a word, he likes saying it over and over.


           IOW, he seems to have a good handle on his own learning style.  Nora 
was... and still is... like that too.  When she first discovered the concept of 
parallel lines she drew grass in every one of the eight colours in her felt pen 
box a day at a time, and then she went on to experimenting with something else. 
Right now she's studying Alexander the Great with help from Yours Truly because 
she understands far more than she can read by herself & she's quite peeved that 
history was neglected in her Life Skills class.  I'm enjoying the experience of 
reading this stuff with her because I did the same at more or less the same age 
(despite my own inadequacy WRT politics or memorizing names & dates of battles) 
& because I came under fire from a certain high school librarian who criticized 
me for reading the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid one after the other.  Her 
stance was that my choice of material lacked variety.  My stance... if kids had 
been allowed to express personal opinions in those days... would have been that 
I'd go on to reading other things when I'd finished with that particular topic. 
One historian says Alexander used the same stallion until the day he died while 
another says he retired the same horse a few years earlier.  If Nora & I hadn't 
read different accounts we probably wouldn't know that.  I like her style.  :-)



MH>  He will say truck and bus all the time when he sees one
MH>  while we are driving around.


           Ah... I gather he's interested in wheeled objects which enable folks 
to get from Point A to Point B.  When Nora was about the same your son is now & 
we were on our way to the local shopping area with her in the stroller (because 
she couldn't walk that far yet) she pointed out & correctly named a bus, a car, 
and a bicycle.  I was thinking to myself "Wow, she's categorizing!"  I once had 
a student in grade five who couldn't do that.  Further on, at a street where we 
had to wait for traffic lights, she pointed out & correctly named a wheelchair. 
The occupant of the wheelchair gave me a disapproving look... I reckon her mind 
was stuck in the 1950's, when kids were taught it's rude to notice such things. 
By then Nora & I had spent so much time in hospital that to us a wheelchair was 
just one of many similar conveyances.  If the woman had said anything to me I'd 
have pointed out that we were using a stroller for the very same reason she was 
using a wheelchair.  IMHO this scenario epitomizes the inadequacy of "political 
correctness".  I tend to forget about the chair when I focus on the human being 
sitting in it, and we've found younger wheelchair users invariably co-operative 
when we remark "I see you're using a Snazzy 350.  How's the turning circle...?"




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)

.