Ds Awareness day #4

Did you know?

"Children with Down syndrome have some physical, intellectual and emotional developmental delays."

Now of all the things about Down syndrome I am thinking that this is the one people most think of when you say Ds. I know that when Ola was born and I was totally oblivious to all the aspects of Ds I thought right away about her having intellectual disability.

This whole subject can take so many turns so I will attempt to keep it on the road I am intending. The one thing that I have learned so far about Ds is that every single one of our children is different. All of them.... the "typical" the "not so typical" and believe me I use the term "typical" loosely, however "typical" is better than "normal" because what is normal anyways?

Even though our children have Ds, it means something different for each of them. What one can do by age one, another might not be able to do by age two. One may hear, the other may be deaf. One may have 20/20 vision the other may need glasses.... and so on.

For the most part children with Ds have low muscle tone and this contributes to the slower physical development. I know when Ola was first born, she was "floppy." She was a "loosey goosey", she seemed really slippery to me and I had a hard time hanging on to her :) Darn muscle tone anyways. Ola is 22 weeks now and can hold her head up and sit well on my lap with a little bit of help. She struggled with tummy time, but improves day by day. She sits in her bumbo and bounces in her jolly jumper like a champ. She is trying to stand when you hold her up (I am thanking the jolly jumper for this.)

As for the intellectual part, "children with Ds most often score in the mild to moderate range of mental handicap. These tests do not measure many important areas of intelligence and one will often be surprised by the memory, insight, creativity, and cleverness of a child with Ds." I think that this sums it up pretty well.

As for the emotional part, I am not sure about this yet. I will have to do some more reading and some more learning on the subject before I pretend to know what I am talking about. All I know about Ola's emotions so far is that she is a happy kid, she doesn't care who you are, you are getting a big ol smile!

Information from LMDSS