These photos show Samantha teaching Aziza how to play with her piggy bank. Samantha starts by holding the desired coin up at chin level and then she waits. Aziza grabs for the coin, lifting her arm up high to do so. Samantha does not release the coin until Aziza makes eye contact with her. Just before handing the coin over, Samantha names it for her. "Coin". As Aziza then works to put the coin in the bank, she is further reinforced by the words, "Coin goes IN". When the coin is dropped through the slot Aziza receives the reward of music from the toy and cheering from myself and Samantha. This 10 second interaction encouraged stretching of the arm upwards, eye contact and communication. This sort of play became second nature to us very quickly and eventually Aziza learned that eye contact was safe, wonderful and a great way to get things that you want!
On an aside, Aziza is so little here - Dec 2010. She had been home four and a half months. Seeing her big belly here makes me frustrated. By Dec 2010 I had already brought her to the ER twice for that buldging tummy, and despite an ultrasound had been told she simply had gas. It would take until July 2011 and many more ER and doctor's visits before a massive grapefruit sized tumor would be found lurking in her upper abdomen. This was a congenital tumor - meaning she was born with it. I noted her unusually swollen belly the first day I laid eyes upon her. How one misses that in a 25 pound child I will never know.
1 comment:
I read this post and smiled at the first part about the complexity and purposefulness of what may seem like a standard play activity. We forget how much we intentially do to work with our kids with DS to enhance and encourage skills/milestones. I see this when I hear my 8 year old explain to someone how to do something with Sydney. He even corrected my step-son one day who was giving silly answers and weird pronunciations to questions Anthony was asking Sydney. Anthony told him that those silly answers just confused Sydney and made it harder to learn something. -As for your mom-sense, I wish "specialists" listened to moms and gave more respect to their intuition and observations.
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