“My daughter Sami has Down Syndrome. After the initial shock, my wife and I decided that we would do what we could to raise her like a typical child, and set out to help her however we could. She was a calm, happy little baby that seemed interested in books from the time she was first able to hold them. We wondered how she knew to turn them right side up, not to mention “read” them from front to back.
We had heard the difficulty people with Down Syndrome had in speaking and reading, and wanted to do what we could to help her. We had heard the success some of the older children in the local Down Syndrome group had with the Love and Learning reading program, and hoped Sami would learn to read as well.
From the time Sami was a few months old, we began reading her books as part of a bedtime ritual. When she was about eight months old, we added the first book in the Love and Learning series to the bedtime routine. It was a simple little book, with each lower case letter of the alphabet in large black print. We had heard that it takes lots and lots of repetition for children with Down Syndrome to learn, so we continued reading her the book and singing the ABC’s for months and months. She appeared interested in the letters on the page, but gave us almost no indication of whether or not it was having any effect on Sami. Somewhere along the way she learned the letter “Y” – and would sometimes say it when she saw it in the book. Unfortunately, there was no other progress, and she even stopped saying the letter “Y”. Determined to keep repeating it as long as it took, we continued on.
A month or so before her second birthday I started reading her the book at bedtime as usual. I opened the book and may have paused a little longer than usual – she said ‘A’. I was surprised. I turned the page and waited – she said ‘B’ – I was getting chills. She continued with the ‘C’, and ‘D’ – I was shocked and amazed. We went through the book and she read 22 of the 26 letters. Not only had she learned almost all her letters, she was vocalizing them clearly. I don’t think my wife believed me until Sami did the same thing for her the next day. She soon learned the few remaining letters and then seemed to enjoy saying them when she saw them everywhere – on people’s shirts, in store windows, etc.
We continued with the program and she amazed us by gradually learning to sight read many words. While knowing her letters and learning to read was reward enough, she had actually learned something even more valuable – she was talking, and, for the most part, talking clearly. Most of the time she would only say one or two words for what she wanted, but by the time she was three she was saying hundreds of words, and has also gone on to learn the sound each letter makes.
Of course, none of the doctors, teachers, or school administrators wanted to believe that she could speak clearly, let alone say her letters, or sight read some words. It was fun to see how surprised they were when she said ‘doctor’, or wandered over to a board and started picking up letters and saying what they are. Most of her ‘typical’ three year old pre-school classmates have yet to learn all of their letters – let alone the sounds they make. She continues to progress, and is now beginning to talk to her peers and speak in short sentences. We never know when something new will ‘click’ with her, so we keep trying. If we had stopped reading the letter book the day before her breakthrough, we would have missed out on all that she had learned up until then.
And to think it all started simply with her saying the letter A….
