Sunday, March 11, 2007

Hannah is busy constructing a 'car' with the twin's magnetic set.

Maybe he won't be an Elvis impresonating Cello playing pediatrician after all - Hannah and Kit opened their own hair dressing salon in the lounge room this afternoon - and yes he is priming the scissors to cut Mummy's hair. Help!!!



a cape for baby ...



Finish with a brush




Uni lessons Week one

I should be studying Topic 2 - and completing the online quiz for it but first I thought I'd pick a couple of parts form last week's readings that I really liked:

K Wheldall Why do Contemporary Special Educators Favour a Non-Categorical Approach to Teaching? in Special Education Perspectives Vol 3 No 1 1994 - focus on the skills the child needs rather than labelling them - the diagnosis in itself is not helpful - we need to see the student as an individual and assess what they already have and what we can help them to learn. Amen! I also liked the common sense view of the role of IQs (or lack thereof) in effective education and finally the last sentence: "contmeporary Special Educators eschew the category and focus on the specific educational needs of the individual child".

K Wheldall and M Carter Reconstructing Behaviour Analysis in Education: a Revised Behavioural Interactionist Perspective for Special Education in Educational Psychology Vol 16 No 2 1996 had this to say: "One of the concomitants of this view is that we must desist from trying to squeeze people with disabilities into regular society by focusing only on how we can change their behaviour. We must invest more energy into changing aspects of the environment, both physical and social, to facilitate the inclusion of people with disabilities".

Yay - another mother of a gorgeous little girl with T21 has her experiences published.
Also I was rather pleased to see that Kathy Evans has written a book called Tuesday's Child about her experiences of mothering a child with DS - she won an award for one of two essays I have seen around that she wrote. They are on the NSW DSA website. One is called Pure Love and the other is called Tueday's Child. I found them to be very powerful when I read them in my first year of coming to terms with Hannah's diagnosis. here is the Pure Love link for those of you who are interested:

and Tuesday's Child article:
and I quote:
"I look at my baby, with her beautiful almond eyes, and her slow smile, which starts at the top and spreads downwards so that her whole face beams. All my fears are momentarily quashed, my prejudices melt away. She raises her hands and waves her fingers with all the grace of a Balinese dancer. They are beautiful fingers, long and tapered. Just right for playing the piano. We are back in our bubble, Caoimhe and I, and life is good. The feelings that wrap around my bones are blissful; they warm the very core of my existence. Beautiful girl, we are so lucky to have you. I don’t know where she fits in society, but a family is a world in microcosm. And I do know that right here, right now, she fits perfectly within my arms. "

2 comments:

Michelle said...

I love seeing pics of the twins "in action"! Thanks for the links to the articles; I'll bookmark them so I can check them out later!

Jen said...

Thanks for sharing the links. I thought Pure Love was a great essay; I could really identify with all of it!