Hi, Mark!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

MH>  Actually, he would use sit in an open indian style and
MH>  use his legs to skoot. It was a combination of a hop and
MH>  skoot using legs (sideways on the ground) and hopping on
MH>  his butt.


           Nora still enjoys sitting cross-legged... in her own inimitable
way, of course!  Years ago it drove her physios crazy because they were afraid
she'd dislocate her hip.  She hasn't yet.  I'm also told it is a very stable
position which helps enable kids to avoid toppling over & maintain good
posture....  :-)



MH>  I had read that the crease tends to be a straight line on
MH>  kids with DS, but that isn't always the case.  There are
MH>  cases of people without DS that have the same straight line
MH>  crease, but they are rare.


           Yes, there's an example of a characteristic associated with DS
which also occurs... perhaps less often... among the general population. 
Another has to do with the "epicanthic fold" at the corner of the eye adjacent
to the nose. For Orientals this is normal... for Caucasians it's normal in
babies & in about 10% of other folks who do not have DS.  Before chromosome
tests were available, Dr. Langdon Down identified numerous characteristics
which are still used today in making a tentative diagnosis.  I've seen enough
real-life examples to hazard a guess in many cases.  It's important to
realize, however, that what's unusual is a collection of features which might
otherwise be relatively rare & that not everybody with DS has exactly the same
features.  The dummified explanations of DS don't acknowledge that there's
more than one variety either.  By comparison, if I see an article about
leukemia in which the author says there are two kinds I may not learn much
from him or her because I can think of five at least.  ;-)



MH>  Getting the proper movement in the tounge seems to be the
MH>  trick with our son. When I work on words with him, I say
MH>  them slow and in sections.  Making a sound and then turning
MH>  it into a word.  Like "TTTTTTTTTTTTTRRRRRRRRR  uck".


           As a former Learning Assistance teacher, I approve!  Exaggeration
is a great teaching tool, IMHO, along with doing these things in slow motion. 
:-)



MH>  Once he masters a word, he likes saying it over and over.


           IOW, he seems to have a good handle on his own learning style. 
Nora was... and still is... like that too.  When she first discovered the
concept of parallel lines she drew grass in every one of the eight colours in
her felt pen box a day at a time, and then she went on to experimenting with
something else. Right now she's studying Alexander the Great with help from
Yours Truly because she understands far more than she can read by herself &
she's quite peeved that history was neglected in her Life Skills class.  I'm
enjoying the experience of reading this stuff with her because I did the same
at more or less the same age (despite my own inadequacy WRT politics or
memorizing names & dates of battles) & because I came under fire from a
certain high school librarian who criticized me for reading the Iliad, the
Odyssey, and the Aeneid one after the other.  Her stance was that my choice of
material lacked variety.  My stance... if kids had been allowed to express
personal opinions in those days... would have been that I'd go on to reading
other things when I'd finished with that particular topic. One historian says
Alexander used the same stallion until the day he died while another says he
retired the same horse a few years earlier.  If Nora & I hadn't read different
accounts we probably wouldn't know that.  I like her style.  :-)



MH>  He will say truck and bus all the time when he sees one
MH>  while we are driving around.


           Ah... I gather he's interested in wheeled objects which enable
folks to get from Point A to Point B.  When Nora was about the same your son
is now & we were on our way to the local shopping area with her in the
stroller (because she couldn't walk that far yet) she pointed out & correctly
named a bus, a car, and a bicycle.  I was thinking to myself "Wow, she's
categorizing!"  I once had a student in grade five who couldn't do that. 
Further on, at a street where we had to wait for traffic lights, she pointed
out & correctly named a wheelchair. The occupant of the wheelchair gave me a
disapproving look... I reckon her mind was stuck in the 1950's, when kids were
taught it's rude to notice such things. By then Nora & I had spent so much
time in hospital that to us a wheelchair was just one of many similar
conveyances.  If the woman had said anything to me I'd have pointed out that
we were using a stroller for the very same reason she was using a wheelchair. 
IMHO this scenario epitomizes the inadequacy of "political correctness".  I
tend to forget about the chair when I focus on the human being sitting in it,
and we've found younger wheelchair users invariably co-operative when we
remark "I see you're using a Snazzy 350.  How's the turning circle...?"




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)