Res: Which therapies should we do?

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Dear ,Hi, I am and my daughter is 5,5, and goes to fully-included general education kindergarten. The things that helped the most this past years are the following:- Regular Nursery since 2 y old, than pre-school, then kinder- Water therapy as a baby (1) and swimming later on (on and off since she was 3). She loves it!- Playing in playgrouds, jungle gyms, etc- Musicalization (small group with typical kids)- Dr Mac from Communication Partners. It is a pity I only started practicing his language development approach the last couple of months. has been making more progress that with any speech therapist she had (and she had about 5 different ones since when she was 5 mo old).

So, do take your time to read everything that is in his website, join the discussion group, buy the book Play to Talk and enjoy playing and interacting with Aimee!http://jamesdmacdonald.org/Articles/MacStart.htmlhttp://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/communicating/cheers,PatDe: Para: DownSyndromeInfoExchange Enviadas: Sábado, 22 de Maio de 2010 17:22:50Assunto: [DownSyndromeInfoExchange] Which therapies should we do?

Hi All, I was wondering if those of you who have kids with DS could tell me a little about what therapies you decided to get at what ages and why? We're trying to determine what our daughter really needs to be doing. Right now we have her in feeding therapy, PT and OT. We're considering dropping the feeding therapy because it hasn't been successful and either doing speech or nothing at all (long story on the feeding therapy - Aimee doesn't eat because of past eating-related trauma and not because of sensory stuff or a lack of skills so there's not a whole lot that the therapist can do). So, in thinking about changing the feeding therapy we're also kind of reconsidering everything everything and wondering what is needed and what is not? If she needs therapy then we absolutely want her to have it. But, we also think that kids need time to just be kids and that sometimes therapy is

overdone. Because of her DS, I'm assuming that she will pretty much always qualify for therapy should we choose to request it. But, I don't think she needs to spend her entire life in therapy!

If it helps, here's a little info on Aimee . . . she is almost 3 years old, home from India for 10 months. In the time that she's made amazing progress and continues to meet milestones at a pretty quick pace. She's still pretty delayed if you look at "typical" kids but about on target or even ahead of other kids with DS here in the states (I'd say she's at around a 22-24 month level with most things with the exception of speech - though we've had an explosion of language the last week or so and she's doing lots of babbling and trying new words every day). She is very motivated and determined. She spends all of her time trying to do new things and is a very "busy" child. She's definitely not one of those kids who you have to convince to try new things. She creates her own challenges if we don't give them to her! Her brothers are 4 and 6 and definitely her best therapy ever! We are very

pleased with her progress so far and she's actually done more, faster than we expected. We are not planning to put her in preschool this fall even though she does qualify (we want her to have more family time first). So, we either need to continue private therapy or not get any therapy at all.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice you can provide. -- ~Check out our blog at http://browneyedble ssings.blogspot. com