- Early Intervention
- Speech
- Gross Motor Skills
- Fine Motor Skills
- Cognitive Development
wechseln Sie die Sprache: |
|
Deutsch |
|
back to Elias' Page |
|
|
|
||||||||
(these pages are still under construction)
When Elias was born, we rarely had any ideas about how to support him individually.It also took some time until we understood the system of public offers here in Cologne, where is involved the Cityīs Early Intervention Center as well as private offices where you can get physiotherapy, occupational and/or speech therapy payed by social insurance. Additionally you can take part in special educational playgroups. In his first year of life, Elias essentially got occupational therapy (for a few weeks), physiotherapy (once a week up to now by the way) and sporadic special educational visits in different qualities . It soon became clear to us that this surely wasnīt enough intervention and that we had to develop creativity and search for informations ourselves. For that reason one or another idea and activity has formed. With this page we want to pass on these - maybe they help someone. Exept for that , I believe that many of our activities throughout could be interesting not only for babies and children with DS but for young children in general.
On the following pages, we simply collected which literature, websites and own ideas were helpful for us and what plainly was fun for Elias and us. This surely isnīt a complete intervention program, rather a loose collection. It would be nice if one or another idea would be useful for you.
What generally is important in our opinion is that a child is being accepted how he or she is and that all efforts for intervention have to build on its own interests, therefore may not be forced from outside. Because of that itīs possible that some of our ideas fit for Elias but not for another child and that on the other side other children with DS like totally different activities. Moreover, intervention shouldnīt grow out for proportion which makes the family feel uncomfortable - stressed parents and siblings feeling neglected are surely not good for a child with a handicap. In that, sometimes less can be more.
It would be nice, if these pages could be completed and extended by experiences of other parents. We would like to hear propositions from you which we really are glad to include on the pages!
Last update: 8/6/2000
Visitors of our Early Intervention pages since 8/13/2000:
