Happy Down Syndrome Awareness Month! 💛🩵 I had a beautiful experience at Lydia’s new school that I wanted to share.
Early this year, Lydia’s teacher approached me & asked if I would be on board if they started teaching her to read. Um, of course!!! This is one of my biggest dreams for her! I gave her teacher an emphatic “Yes!” and she replied, “She’s such a smart little thing.”
My heart & brain exploded at the same time. I KNOW my Lydia is smart—I’ve known it for a long time. I know that she understands a lot more than she is able to communicate back (receptive v expressive language). One of my main motivations for pursuing her autism diagnosis was this sense that her mind is a locked box—there’s so much in there, a veritable treasure box!, but we haven’t quite found the right key, yet. I was very worried when we enrolled her in her school class where they described students who “didn’t know their ABCs or how to count” because Lydia DOES know those things… it’s just getting her to perform them that’s the problem 🥴 (also, I don’t think that limited analysis of all these kids’ abilities is fair… but anyway…). So here comes this teacher in a situation that is totally new to us who essentially says, “Yep, I see it, too. She’s got some challenges, but this girl’s got potential. Let’s chase it.” And my unsuspecting heart—which has never heard those words about my girl before, though it believes them with all it’s got—absolutely hits the moon.
But my brain starts fighting back. Lydia can barely speak! She’s only got a few words in her vocabulary that she uses proactively. Can reading come before speech? Concurrent w/ speech? How? Clearly I have so much to learn… because the answer appears to be YES.
Again, there’s A LOT going on in that little brain.
I’ve been getting daily notes from her teacher 😇🥰 and Lydia’s progress has been stunning. Today’s note read: “Lydia worked on reading with me. She did amazing! She was very close to passing off the story. For comprehension questions about the story we are just asking simple who, what, where, and why questions.”
So there you have it. WE ARE LEARNING TO READ. Set no limits. Find your people & reach for the stars. ✨
