Friday, August 21, 2009
Learning to Ride
I read an article in the Boston Globe recently about a camp that teaches kids with special needs to ride bikes. Soon after having Brennan, I read that this is a skill that many kids with Down syndrome are unable to learn. Riding bikes seems like such an integral part of childhood and I was sad to think that it may not be a part of Brennan's. I even read recently that as few as 10% of kids with Down syndrome can ride bikes. However, the camp that is discussed in the Boston Globe article says that after attending a week long camp, approximately 85% of the campers learn to ride. It makes me wonder how many other things that were believed to be impossible for our kids are, in fact, possible - it's just a matter of finding the right method of teaching.
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8 comments:
Totally amazing. I love it!
Wow, that is amazing! Perhaps we just need to investigate better ways to teach.
I absolutely love this Sharon!! Thank you for sharing it. I completely believe that our kids are able to SOOOO much more than anyone gives them credit. That is why we HAVE to fight for them and work hard for them!!! They deserve it!
we were just talking about that today! So many teachers didn't think that kids with Ds could learn so they didn't really try to teach them much. But when they figured out HOW kids with DS learned - ( visual - repetitive etc ) then our kids soared!
It's realizations like this that I hope propels society to shift the mindset from "can't" to "can". And it's up to us parents to show the rest of society what our kids are made of. :-)
That's interesting. I'd never read that about bike riding. I saw a video on Ds about a year ago and the child was riding his bike, so I never thought John Michael wouldn't. It's great that we moms continue to help each other, too, to learn better ways to teach our children. Thanks for sharing.
We jsut had one of those here in Texas. I heard it was very successful ! thanks for your nice comments on my blog.
I didn't know it was thought to be impossible to ride a bike for our kiddos. Morgan just learned how to ride a 2 wheeler with training wheels this summer. It took her longer to understand the concept of steering but now that she has that down I am hoping we can get her riding a bike without training wheels next summer. I'll have to read the article and get some pointers! :)
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