Thursday, August 16, 2007
Hello Upsidedownlife/Homealonemom.
I am very excited to welcome homealonemom to the blogging community. She has an older daughter (a bit of a traveller from what I hear) and 13 year old twins, yes, one with Down Syndrome. I am really looking forward to hearing about her life and picking up bits of advice from her experience. You can find her via the title of this post. Welcome.
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2 comments:
Hi Shelley,
Yes you can post me on your links, I'm looking forward to meeting more families! Hannah is a cutie!!
Patrick learned about ds by tagging along to all the therapies when she was little. We've just kind of aways talked about it with him-even now. I did get some childrens books to read to Colleen and her classmates (until grade3)I truly believe that Colleen doesn't know she's different than any one else. I don't think her language impairments and cognitive skills are at a level for understanding that. It is a blessing for her-her feelings don't get hurt, because she doesn't understand what she's missing. She attended grade school with the same kids for 6 years and they've always been nice to her and still are in 7th. Still, she is never invited to sleepovers, movies or anything social. So I feel bad, but she doesn't seem to care. She now has classmates with ds, but I don 't think she knows they have that in common.
The twins were best buddies when they were little. They shared a room until age 5, tagged along to therapies, and were in early childhood together (Patrick had speech and language problems). Patrick was a good role model for her skill development. But soon her surpassed her. We had them in separate schools because Patrick would look after her, help her-even the adults depended on him to translate for them. This past year was the first time they were in the same school-different classes. Patrick is more annoyed and embarrassed by her trying to hang out with he and his friends. But his friends are very kind to her. The teachers told us that because Patrick is popular and has a sister with ds, that the other kids are nicer to all the special needs kids. At home they fight over tv a lot. He gets mad when she goes into his room and gets into his stuff. She does have some problems with boundaries and getting into everyones stuff. They are both territorial. In the car, Colleen likes to listen to her cd player and sing along. But she sounds like a loud cow mooing, and Patrick is always telling her to shut up. So in a lot of ways they are typical teen sibs. We do tell Patrick that a twin without ds would also bug him a lot too-things would be more competitive.
I'm going to have to go over and say hello!
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