Down Syndrome children can greatly benefit from EARLY training

A child therapist who I very greatly respect, Ann Osterling (from Champaign, Illinois) wrote me an email message in response to my (undoubtedly superficial) comments about Down Sydrome that I thought everyone interested in helping these kids would enjoy reading. In her words: You threw out the idea of intensive early intervention as one option for improving the learning outcomes of children with Down Syndrome. Not only do I agree, but we actually have already seen the tremendous positive impact of early intervention (in these) children. If I had Down Syndrome when I was born 50 years ago, it is highly likely that I would have been put into an institution. After all, we knew that people with Down Syndrome were very retarded, and had very low IQs. We knew that because that’s where most people with Down Syndrome were, and we could see how severely impacted their ability to learn was. However, federal legislation in the 70’s meant that all children with disabilities were entitled to support and education through the public schools. In addition to research showing that school-aged children with disabilities could benefit from special education services, there were research projects showing that we could work with preschoolers, toddlers and infants and make an impact. So, now children with Down Syndrome are actually entitled to therapies and education from infancy on. Have we seen any difference in children with Down Syndrome since the days of putting them into institut...
Source: On the Brain by Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Autism Origins, Treatments Brain Fitness BrainHQ Childhood Learning Cognitive Impairment in Children Cognitive impairments Language Development Reading and Dyslexia Source Type: blogs