A lot has been going on in Crystal and Katie’s life recently. With Crystal being a young mother, with very little experience with children, especially children with a disability, she has had a difficult time trying to figure out what are the best situations to put Katie in. Crystal wants to be able to provide Katie with all the services she needs in order to be the most successful individual her daughter is capable of. Therefore, Crystal continues to work towards her GED in order for her to obtain a better paying job in the future. Taking classes, working part-time jobs, and caring for her daughter has Crystal feeling very overwhelmed and confused. She lacks any type of support from her parents or from Katie’s daughter. This is leaving Crystal feeling very alone. People close to her are very worried about her and decide to help Crystal out by providing support she needs and help relieve any type of stress she may be dealing with. Crystal was lucky enough to find a part-time job with flexible hours at a local grocery store. In addition, once a week she works as a secretary for an optometrist. These two job opportunities help relieve the stress Crystal has been feeling and helps provide a more stable environment for Katie.
Katie is now entering 1st grade. Her IEP team gets together and discusses this year’s goals and strategies for Katie to be successful in the school. They do realize that now that she is entering grade school, that the material will be much more difficult and complex than the material she was learning in kindergarten. Therefore, they need to make an effort to be constantly observing Katie and make sure she is able to be more successful. Katie’s 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Wheeler, is very determined to help Katie in any way she can. Mrs. Wheeler is going to send home weekly notes about Katie’s progress to Crystal and will send a report to Katie’s IEP team on her progress or difficulties she may be facing.
Crystal decides to sign Katie up for the recreational soccer team. This could be a very positive experience for Katie socially and she will be able to get more exercise to obtain a healthier lifestyle. At the first day of practice, Crystal walks Katie down to the other kids. Katie’s teacher taught her how to make an appropriate introduction to kids. Katie introduces herself to the kids and they are all very accepting of Katie. Crystal was worried the other kids may judge Katie because of her disability however this was not the case. Katie did a very good job of passing the ball back and forth. However, had a very difficult time respecting the other kids and coach’s personal space. In addition, at the end of the practice Katie got frustrated and started to throw another temper tantrum. Crystal explained to the coaches that this often happens when Katie is frustrated or tired and they understood.
Halfway through the school year, Katie’s IEP team and Crystal meet to talk about Katie’s progress and difficulties. Mrs. Wheeler pointed out some progress physically and some things Katie needed to work on with her fine motor skills. Physically, gym class has been a very positive experience for her. She is able to be active and Mrs. Wheeler has noticed some weight loss, making some of the activities easier for Katie to participate in and she is at the same level as the other kids in her class. She also contributes her weight loss with the recreational soccer team and the school lunches. Katie qualifies for free and reduced lunch. The school lunches help Katie get proper amounts of food for lunch and also provides a well-balanced meal. In addition, Katie’s neighbor has a garden in her backyard full of fruits and vegetables and let’s Katie pick one of the fruits or vegetables to take with her for a snack. Mrs. Wheeler has noticed some difficulties in Katie’s fine motor skills compared to the other kids in her class. Katie still has difficulty holding a pencil and crayon and writing with it. This makes some tasks within the classroom very difficult. Katie loves to color pictures but often when coloring, Katie will hold the crayon too tight and will end up breaking the crayons. In addition, Katie is having trouble writing with the pencil. One activity done recently was to write the alphabet in uppercase and lowercase. Katie had difficulty understanding the difference between the two and had trouble holding the pencil correctly. Katie’s occupational therapy said this is something they will do intensive therapy on in the next few weeks. They discuss that Katie also needs to be working on personal space with other kids and learning appropriate social interactions. Katie has a tendency to be on the playground and will constantly hug and kiss the other kids. This is resulting in Katie having a difficult time making friends. Katie’s special education teacher discusses possible strategies in the classroom that will help Katie be more successful. Especially implementing strategies for test taking. This will help her with her cognitive development and will allow her to be on the same level as her peers.
At the end of first grade and in the beginning of second grade, Katie’s special education teacher implemented the strategies she talked about to help Katie become more successful and less frustrated. Katie now is able to have a more cognitively appropriate exam. Katie’s special education teacher was able to do this by determining her individual zone of proximal development during first grade and scaffolding her to help her better grasp the material. For example, when Katie takes a multiple choice math test she gets 3 choices while the other kids get 4-5 choices. In addition, Katie gets less questions on her exam. For example, on the multiplication test, the other kids in her class had 20 questions while Katie had 12-15. The last strategy approach was to give Katie a longer time to take the exam because with Katie’s diagnosis of Down syndrome, it takes her longer than her peers to come up with the appropriate answers. These strategies have helped Katie become more successful in the classroom and have relatively the same understanding as her peers.
Katie’s second grade teacher, Mrs. Gray, has noticed some of Katie’s strengths and weaknesses in expressive and receptive language. Katie has extreme strength areas of vocabulary and pragmatics (social interaction language). Although Katie still has a decreased mean length utterance than her peers, she socially is able to form more complex sentences when communicating. In addition, Katie is able to understand much more than she speaks. As Katie is maturing her so is her vocabulary. Her social interaction skills are very good. She uses appropriate gesture and facial expressions when she is talking to some of the girls in her class. However, during Mrs. Gray’s lessons on syntax and morphology Katie has a much more difficult time understand grammar, verb tenses, word roots, suffixes and prefixes. This could be because of complex nature. Mrs. Gray and Katie’s special education teach has realized that her test scores for receptive language are much higher than her expressive. In addition, when Katie is in class, she is able to learn vocabulary, math, and science better visually. Some computer programs Mrs. Gray uses for vocabulary and on syntax and morphology have really helped Katie improve. Mrs. Gray and Katie’s IEP team meet and talk about how crucial Crystal is in the development of Katie, especially with Katie’s speech and language abilities and reading skills. Katie is still in the learning to read stage, but next year is when they start to read to learn!
In science class, Katie and her peers are learning about different animals, weather patterns, and classifying things as living or non-living. Katie does an exercise where she is given two choices of whether an object something is considered living or non-living, and Mrs. Gray sees that this is very difficult for Katie. She sends Katie to her special education classroom where she is given more time and extra help with the worksheets. Katie’s teacher sees that she is having trouble classifying item. She also saw this when Katie had a difficult time classifying a vowel vs. consonant. Because this activity is very frustrating for Katie, she begins to throw a temper tantrum. Mrs. Gray calls Crystal because Katie has not gotten any better, and Katie is taken home. This worries Crystal of what could happen in the future when things become much more difficult. In addition, when Crystal picks Katie up from school, the principle says that she has gotten many complaints from other children’s parent’s that when Katie is not in a restricted environment and is in a more open environment, like the playground, she has a hard time interacting with the other kids appropriately and giving them their space and keeping her hands to herself. Crystal is worried that Katie is starting to regress in some of the skills her and the IEP team have worked on. This makes Crystal wonder if Katie should spend all day in the special education program and start more intensive therapy with her OT and SLP.
Crystal finished up her GED and applied to a cosmetology program to learn to cut and style hair and do manicures and pedicures. This will provide a better income for her and Katie. In addition, as Katie begins to enter third grade, Crystal decides to try to involve Katie in another recreational sport, gymnastics. Crystal and Katie’s IEP team believe this may help aid in some of Katie’s issues with personal space.
Decision point: Does Crystal have Katie spend all day in the special education classrooms to do her work and work on her therapy or does she continue with part of the day in the regular class room and part of the day in the special education classroom?
Questions:
1. What will be Crystal’s average income as a cosmetologist when she finishes school?
2. What is the difference between expressive and receptive language?
3. Is it common for a child with Down syndrome to have issues with personal space and appropriate social interactions?
4. Is it common for mothers of a child with Down syndrome to feel stressed out and alone?
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