Early Intervention

“Early intervention”! I am not sure I knew this term before we had Coraline. It's such a familiar term now.

It’s the basis of the developmental play we do with Coraline, and the therapies she has. Research has been done to show how children with Down's Syndrome learn, so early intervention can focus on learning strengths early on.

Children with Down's Syndrome tend to have a strength in their visual short term memory. Their verbal short-term memory, i.e. learning from listening, tends to be less strong.

The idea is that we should back things up visually, hence early intervention can be centred around this. Another factor to consider in terms of auditory learning, is "glue ear" which Coraline has currently, (due to smaller ear tubes which can block and take a while to clear). Glue ear is akin to listening as though you are in a swimming pool.

So right now we are working with lots of visual prompts. Her speech therapist has made her a key chain of large laminated photos. We show her the one pertaining to what we’re about to do before we do it e.g. bath, walk, pram, car so she knows what’s coming (as with just listening she may not know what we’re telling her we’re going to do). I will print out and add this one to it for “paddling”. The photos are all of us in our daily lives doing the activities as it makes them personal to her.

We have pictures to denote nursery rhymes so she can choose one visually (she’s not yet fully choosing but we keep offering choice). We use picture cards and so on for learning sounds. I know there’ll be much more as we go along.

Photo at the park yesterday. #earlyintervention